Wrda

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Presiding Officer knows, we are working on a bill we call WRDA, W-R-D-A, which is the Water Resources Development Act. This is important to the entire country because what it focuses on is obviously clean drinking water but also the kinds of infrastructure that protect public safety and make commerce and transportation possible.

I commend the leadership of Chairman Inhofe, the Senator from Oklahoma, and Ranking Member Boxer, the Senator from California, for the work they have done getting us this far.

In particular, I wanted to mention the application of this legislation to my home State of Texas. Texas understands that water is a precious resource and one that needs to be managed effectively. There is an old saying in Texas that whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. It kind of makes you chuckle, but it demonstrates the point that water is essential to life. It is essential to our agricultural community to be able to grow our crops and water our livestock. It is indispensable, but it is easy to overlook all the work it takes to craft good legislation that looks out for the whole country's water supply and also protects our ports, our waterways, and helps guard against flooding. These are just a few of the projects included in this bill.

In April, this legislation overwhelmingly passed out of committee. I am pleased this bill serves as just another example of what we can accomplish when we put politics aside and work together in the best interests of the American people.

I wish to mention that I am also grateful this legislation includes part of a bill that I introduced last spring called the COAST Act. Texas has hundreds of miles of coastline, and the State's location in the Gulf of Mexico makes it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes, storms, and other weather impacts such as flooding, storm surges, and high winds. I don't need to tell the Presiding Officer about that, as Louisiana recently suffered terrible flooding.

In 2008, Texans saw firsthand when Hurricane Ike made landfall. It became the second most costly U.S. hurricane on record.

Of course, because the area is so densely populated and includes one of our Nation's busiest ports and energy hubs, major damage along the Texas coast would likely be felt well beyond our State in much of the rest of the country as well, particularly the economic impacts. Safeguarding the gulf coast from the next major hurricane should be a priority not just to Texas but a national priority, as I say, both to those who live there and those who would suffer the potential economic consequences. That is why this particular provision, the coastal Texas protection provision in the Water Resources Development Act legislation, is so important.

This is very straightforward. All it would do is require the Army Corps of Engineers to take advantage of preexisting studies and not have to duplicate those studies as a prerequisite to addressing this issue. The Corps wouldn't have to duplicate efforts but could instead build on the good work of leaders in the State that had already been done, so the Texas coast can get the protection it needs sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, the Water Resources Development Act also includes projects that will benefit communities across my State, such as infrastructure improvements to help reduce flooding, provisions that make our ship channels more efficient and strengthen our ports by making them safer and better equipped to handle growing amounts of trade. I know there is a lot of discussion about trade, particularly in the Presidential election season, but I will tell you that trade is viewed as an unmitigated good in my State. We are the No. 1 exporting State in the Nation, and that is just one reason why our economy is growing faster than the national economy.

We have learned a very simple lesson; that is, when you grow things-- when you make things--and you have more people and more markets to sell to around the world, it is good for jobs, and it is good for the economy. I hope that some of our leaders and those who aspire to become the next President of the United States learn from some of the lessons that we have learned from in Texas--that trade is good.

That is not to say that with globalization there aren't some people disadvantaged, and we can address some of those concerns with funds dedicated to retraining efforts. But the fact of the matter is that more technology and more globalization are changing our economy and our labor markets in ways that we will never be able to reverse. So we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water and just turn our backs on the benefits of trade, which means we need to have efficient ports that are equipped to handle growing amounts of trade globally.

In conclusion, on the Water Resources Development Act, let me say again that I express my gratitude to Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Boxer for this solid, bipartisan legislation. I hope it passes the Senate soon. I trust it will be out of the Senate by the middle of next week.

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