FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. SHUSTER. 4.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Resolution 839, I offer amendments en bloc.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I support considering these amendments en bloc, all of which have been approved by both the majority and minority. These Members put forward thoughtful amendments, and I am pleased to be able to support moving them en bloc.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of the Jackson Lee Amendment to H.R. 4, FAA Reauthorization and Disaster Recovery Reform Act, which is included in En Bloc Amendment Number Four.
I.thank the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules for making this Jackson Lee Amendment in order.
I thank Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member DeFazio for their leadership in bringing the FAA Reauthorization and Disaster Recovery Reform Act to the House Floor for consideration.
I am disappointed that the other Jackson Lee Amendments to H.R. 4, the ``FAA Reauthorization and Disaster Recovery Reform Act that addressed disaster recovery reform and offered improvements to commercial air transportation, were not made in order.
I offered Jackson Lee Amendment No. 609 because of my experience with Hurricane Harvey.
Over the years, Members of Congress, develop an extensive network of people we work with and those who may have need of legislative assistance.
The storm and the catastrophic flooding that resulted from Hurricane Harvey put at risk thousands of people who needed help.
The 911 emergency call centers serving the disaster area were inundated with thousands of calls for rescues.
I am pleased to say that my office managed dozens of calls, which came to me and my staff from Houston residents seeking rescue or medical assistance.
FEMA, the City of Houston and the State of Texas did exceptional work in the disaster response for Hurricane Harvey.
There is no blame or fault, but valuable lessons that can be learned.
There was no way to pre-prepare for Hurricane Harvey or Maria or Irma or any of the other major disaster events in 2017.
What we can do is learn as much as possible and apply those lessons to future disaster response and recovery efforts.
When there is an event, like Hurricane Harvey there are important and valuable lessons that can help us to meet future challenges.
Harvey's significance is the size of the impact zone and the level of flooding experienced.
The nine-county Houston metro area impacted by Hurricane Harvey covers 9,444 square miles, an area larger than five states, including New Hampshire, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Harris County covers 1,778 square miles, enough space to fit New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Austin and Dallas, with room still to spare.
There was over 41,500 square miles of land mass impacted by Hurricane Harvey and the subsequent flooding that covered an area larger than the States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont combined.
Hurricane Harvey dropped 21 trillion gallons of rainfall on Texas and Louisiana, most of it on the Houston Metroplex.
Harvey dropped 51.88 inches of rain near Cedar Bayou, in the City of Houston, and 52 inches in Nederland and nearby Groves Texas making this the highest rain totals ever recorded for a single U.S. weather event.
At its peak on September 1, 2017, one-third of Houston was underwater.
At the peak on August 31, there were 34,575 evacuees in shelters across Texas.
Hurricane Harvey is the largest housing disaster to strike the U.S. in our nation's history.
Hurricane Harvey damaged 203,000 homes, of which 12,700 were destroyed.
On April 17, 2018, 2,585 families are still in hotel rooms in hotels because of Hurricane Harvey.
Thousands of others with severe damage to their homes continue to live with family or friends.
889,425 people have registered for assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
There are families including small children and the elderly living in mold infested or gutted-out homes.
The Jackson Lee Amendment made in order for consideration of H.R. 4, provides for a GAO report 240 days following enactment on long-term recovery efforts following Hurricane Andrew, September 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ike, and Hurricane Sandy to better inform the Congress when catastrophic events occur that may require long-term recovery planning.
My amendment is the first step to determine how best to stress test FEMA for capacity and competence to respond to several major disaster at the same time.
Disasters like Harvey, Maria, Jose, Sandy, Ike, and September 11, 2018 are exemplars of the most challenging and catastrophic events in our nation's modern history.
These disasters will or have taken years to recovery from, which classifies them as long term recovery events.
We need to learn from our past to better secure our future should our nation face similar challenges.
This Jackson Lee Amendment would ensure that we learn and benefit from these tragic events so that we might be better prepared for future challenges.
The amendment will provide GAO report that will: define a federal disaster long-term recovery, define the stages of a long-term recovery, and report on the competence and capacity of FEMA to manage 2 or more major disasters of the magnitude exemplified--simultaneously.
Further, the GAO will report on lessons that may be applied to future long-term disaster recovery efforts.
The GAO will also report on what existing authority granted to FEMA to advise and make recommendations to the President regarding Presidential Disaster Declarations which may be instructive regarding a Presidential long-term recovery disaster declaration.
Another Jackson Lee Amendment to the Disaster Recovery Reform component of the bill, but which was not made in order would have made permanent the FEMA Office of Response and Recovery, which currently exists but is not codified by law.
In 2017, starting on August 25, when Hurricane Harvey struck Texas, on September 6, when Hurricane Irma lashed the U.S. Virgin Islands, on September 9, when Hurricane Jose smashed into Puerto Rico, and Hurricane Irma moved over the Florida Keys, and on September 20, when Hurricane Maria took aim at Puerto Rico; FEMA had to respond to each disaster and engage in sustained recovery efforts that will in the cases of Texas and Puerto Rico last for years.
Hurricane Harvey broke a rainfall record for a single tropical storm with more than 4 feet of rain.
Puerto Rico is still mired in attempting to recover from the longest blackout in U.S. history after Hurricane Maria struck many months ago.
More than 1,000 are estimated to have died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath.
Following the hurricanes came California's most destructive and largest wildfire season ever.
The Tubbs Fire in Northern California killed 22 people and damaged more than 5,600 structures.
Last year was also the third-hottest year on record.
San Francisco reported its highest temperature ever, 106 degrees Fahrenheit, while other parts of the country set records for high- temperature streaks.
For states like Arizona and South Carolina, 2017 was the warmest year ever.
14 places across Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas reported record- high water levels during floods in April and May.
In 2017, requests for federal disaster aid jumped tenfold compared to 2016, with 4.7 million people registering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Last year will go down in the record books for many reasons, destructive hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, and droughts struck leaving death and destruction.
Every place in this nation has one or more vulnerability to floods, damaging storms, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanic activity, or earth movement--such as mudslides.
FEMA is the nation's premier organization that must respond to catastrophes at a moment's notice.
This Jackson Lee Amendment will allow Congress to develop better situational awareness on FEMA's role in disaster response especially when there may be multiple disasters putting demand on limited agency resources that require long-term recovery planning.
Thank you for this opportunity to explain my amendment and I ask for bipartisan support for this Jackson Lee Amendment included in En Bloc Four.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's attempts and work to try to decrease the deficits and the debt in this country, but Essential Air Service is just that. He named a few communities, and they are close to--I guess I can't make a great argument about those, but there are places like Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, or Iowa. These folks are living miles and miles, hours and hours away-- several hours, in many cases--from the nearest airport. As Mr. DeFazio pointed out, this connects those communities for economic development.
The other thing, he makes a point, as a conservative, when you pay user fees into a trust fund and it goes to that intended purpose--in this case, a small piece of that goes to Essential Air Service--that is what we should be doing in America: people that use something are contributing to that service or whatever that government agency is providing them.
Again, under the bill, in 2012, we put reforms in to reform Essential Air Service; and, this bill, the underlying bill, directs the GAO to study and find out the effects of those reforms.
So, again, while I support and applaud the gentleman's efforts to help get the debt under control, this is not the place to start.
Mr. Chairman, I urge rejection of this amendment.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's amendment. It does remove the confusion with the industry stakeholders, but the hysteria that the other side is proclaiming, that roadways are going to become a slaughterhouse because if this goes away or it is clarified, truckers are just going to be out there running into people left or right, I mean, it is ridiculous.
It is not a good business model for any company to want to have an incentive, which the other side has, I think, said, to hire unsafe drivers. That is not a good business model. In fact, you will go out of business, most likely, if you go out there and hire drivers who are bad drivers, dangerous drivers. The facts don't bear that out.
Of the auto accidents that include trucks in it, over 75 percent of them are not the trucker's fault, it is the person in the car's fault.
Truckers are professionals, and to have impugned this whole class of people, this whole group of people that go out on these roadways and work hard every day and try to do it as safely as they can, is just plain wrong.
Again, as I said, truckers are professionals. Seventy-five percent of those accidents that truckers are involved in, it is not their fault.
We continue to hype up and to put these things out there for, again, another class of worker out there, and that is the trial lawyers. They make millions and millions of dollars going out there and suing these people that, again, do their best every day to try to be safe on the roadways.
So, again, this is a sensible amendment, this clarifies it, and it helps to make our roadways safer, not more dangerous.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption, and I thank the gentleman again for yielding.
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Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Duncan of Tennessee) having assumed the chair, Mr. Bacon, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 4) to reauthorize programs of the Federal Aviation Administration, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.
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