Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act Of 2007

Floor Speech

GULF COAST HURRICANE HOUSING RECOVERY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - March 20, 2007)

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Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for yielding time rather than turf. And the gentleman is quite right. I greatly appreciate the participation that we had, the partnership between our two committees. And I want to compliment the gentleman from Massachusetts and the Chair of the subcommittee, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert), and the Republican members on our committee who have all worked together to see to it that this critical piece of legislation dealing with addressing the housing needs still outstanding, 18 months after Katrina and Rita devastated the gulf coast, to see that they can be carried through, that we can deliver the needs of the people in the entire gulf coast area.

We have worked out some concerns that we had on our side through the jurisdiction our committee has over FEMA to address the problems of people to ensure that we provide new assistance and speed up the help from the existing programs, make sure that that money flows more vigorously to the people and readily.

I have been engaged with FEMA since the mid-1980s when the then-Reagan administration proposed to revise funding under, what we now call FEMA was then Civil Defense, as to reduce to zero the Federal support for almost every disaster except a very few, and then there would be only 25 percent Federal support.

With the help of a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, a Republican, and the ranking Republican on my Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, we exposed this failing to the public. We rallied support, created the framework which is today FEMA, and that Member of Congress from Pennsylvania then introduced a bill we developed in committee. We got it enacted. And many years later, he was selected by President Bush to be the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. So bipartisanship on this issue goes back very deeply to the very beginning of this issue.

And one of the things I wanted to talk about that was initiated through our committee and with the Clinton administration was the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, critical funds that help get homes and properties out of storms' way, saving properties, saving lives. Over $7 billion has been invested under FEMA in the mitigation program to over 1,000 federally declared disasters.

An independent study of the Institute for Business and Home Safety found: ``Mitigation produces significant net benefits to society as a whole, to individuals, States and communities in reduced future losses and savings to the Federal Treasury in future reduced tax revenues and hazard-related expenditures. For every dollar spent on mitigation,'' the study found, ``the society saves an average of $7.''

After the 1993 Mississippi River floods, Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds removed homes, removed entire communities from the flood zone. After tornadoes, Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds created tornado-safe rooms in what is known as ``Tornado Alley.'' We have used those funds to great benefit.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration, early on, proposed to terminate hazard mitigation funds. We restore that authority in this and previous legislation and will do so in subsequent legislation. But this is not the last bill in the House to deal with the devastation caused by Katrina, and I hope by the end of next week we will bring the Water Resources Development Act to the House floor from our committee, some nearly $14 billion in flood control, navigation, environmental restoration projects. Of long standing, over 6 years we have waited in our committee to bring this bill to the floor. We passed it three times. It has never gotten through the Senate; never gotten to conference over it and, again, a bipartisan bill. But it will begin reconstruction of the coastal Louisiana flood plain and of the Mississippi area flood plain. It will authorize construction of the Morganza Flood Control Project in central Louisiana to protect people from flood damage and from future hurricanes. It will close the Mississippi River gulf outlet that the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson) well understands caused salt water intrusion and destruction of the marsh land that was the buffering and protective entity against floods that came from Lake Borne in and overtopped St. Bernard Parish, washed homes away. We will close that off and rebuild it.

So I would cite those few things. This bill is critically important. It deals with very specific aspects. All of us have to continue working together to craft the needed protection, both by restoring wetlands and putting in place the structures of flood control and wind surge damage to the gulf area and particularly to the New Orleans area. I have been there many, many times; and I can say that it is disheartening to see how slow the progress is coming along in certain areas of that city, those that desperately need it.

This bill, and I take my hat off to the chairman of the Financial Services Committee and to the gentlewoman from California for leading the charge and making a powerful statement that we are going to address these needs, this bill will effectively do that.

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