[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 166 (Monday, October 16, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6386-S6387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Hurricane Recovery Effort

  Madam President, the other item I can't stop thinking about is one 
that has taken a great toll on my State and our region of the country, 
and that is Hurricane Harvey, the most extreme rain event in the 
history of the United States. Literally 50 inches of rain fell in 5 
days in the Houston area.
  Last week, I saw images of the Texas World Speedway, a racecar track 
at College Station that is being used as a processing lot. Here is a 
picture of that.
  At its peak, tens of thousands of cars were parked there, awaiting 
damage assessments by insurance companies. A sea of them had filled the 
entire speedway, as can be seen on this chart, and it was starting to 
spill into surrounding areas, too--cars in all directions, as far as 
the eye could see.
  How could Hurricane Harvey damage so many cars? Well, cars these 
days--the newer ones--are basically computers on wheels, and when they 
get wet in an extreme flooding event like this, they essentially become 
a total loss, like these cars at the Texas World Speedway. It is an 
amazing picture. All the cars there, mind you, represent only a tiny 
percentage of all the vehicles damaged in the storm. Some of the 
estimates I have heard are that as high as one-half million personal 
vehicles were damaged and even totaled.
  The speedway is just one of the images that continue to keep me up at 
night. How are my constituents, these Texans, going to get to work? How 
are they going to take their kids to school? When will their car and 
their house be ready so they can live in their home? When will their 
highways and driveways be fixed? What is being done to ensure that 
history doesn't repeat itself when, year after year, many parts of the 
Harris County-Houston area are flooded because many of the important 
Corps of Engineer projects have not been started, much less completed, 
which would have diverted the rain and saved many of these homes and 
many of these cars.
  Last Thursday, the House passed a $36.5 billion hurricane and 
wildfire relief bill. The vote sends the measure over to the Senate, 
and I look forward to debating the supplemental appropriation in the 
days ahead.
  The House's emergency measure is intended to replenish the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency's nearly depleted coffers with $18.7 
billion to the Disaster Relief Fund. If we don't act soon, I am told, 
FEMA could run out of money as early as October 23.
  The House bill will also address the National Flood Insurance Program 
by forgiving $16 billion of its debt and allowing it to pay more claims 
for property owners in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin 
Islands.
  Nevertheless, I must say I am more than a little bit disappointed by 
this piece of legislation. I share the frustrations of Gov. Greg Abbott 
and Members of the Houston area congressional delegation, who have 
pointed out that this bill doesn't come close to fulfilling the very 
reasonable requests that have been made to rebuild and recover from 
Hurricane Harvey. Texas needs more, and the State deserves it, too, 
after all it has gone through. We are not going to throw up our hands 
and relent. We are going to keep on pushing.
  I appreciate the assurances from Speaker Paul Ryan and the 
administration that Texas will get what it needs to rebuild the homes 
and businesses lost in the hurricane and the funding that it needs to 
expand bayous and develop critical flood mitigation projects.
  Governor Abbott told me the Speaker told him Congress will take up 
the State's recent request as soon as November. I am grateful to him 
for that promise, but we don't need any more general statements of 
support. We are not asking for any more expressions of sympathy. We 
need specifics and a specific commitment to follow through on Texas's 
demonstrated need for assistance.
  I predict that the House bill will not move through the Senate until 
the bill provides the sort of specific commitment we could take to the 
bank. This isn't about Hurricane Harvey either. This is about Hurricane 
Irma and Hurricane Maria.
  We cannot afford to wait much longer. The Texas families who have 
been out of their homes since Hurricane Harvey hit can't afford to wait 
much longer. The people who have lost their mode of transportation as a 
result of this flood and this hurricane can't afford to wait much 
longer. The small businesses that have been simply wiped out and who 
have been denied access to the funds they need in order to restart and 
rebuild their lives cannot afford to wait much longer.
  The clock is ticking, and I will continue to work with the Governor 
and the rest of the Texas delegation, as well as our friends from 
Florida and others who were hit by other natural disasters, to make 
sure that collectively we present our case to the Appropriations 
Committees and to the Senate. We are not asking to be treated any 
better than anybody else after a natural disaster like this, but we 
sure will not accept being treated worse. We are going to work 
together, on a bipartisan basis, to make sure that is the case.
  Let me just close with a few words from my good friend and colleague 
from Laredo, TX, Representative Henry Cuellar. Now, Henry is what they 
call a Blue Dog Democrat, somebody I have worked with a lot on border 
issues in particular. He is on the House Appropriations Committee, and 
he was asked whether the House's most recent bill was going to be the 
final appropriation to address the losses as a result of Hurricanes 
Harvey, Maria, or Irma. ``No,'' he said emphatically, ``we are going to 
do more,'' and he is absolutely right.
  I am here to say that speaking as one Senator, I intend to make sure 
the U.S. Government keeps its commitments to the people in Texas, to 
the people in Florida, to the people in Puerto Rico, and to the people 
in the Virgin Islands when it comes to assisting them to recover from 
this terrible natural disaster.
  We are not going to continue to take the promises of the Office of 
Management and Budget or the administration or our friends in the 
leadership in the House, for that matter, that we are going to get to 
this later. There is an expression in my part of the country that when 
somebody asks you when are you going to do something, the response is 
manana--tomorrow. To every question of when, it is manana.

[[Page S6387]]

  We demand that this problem be dealt with on a timely basis, and we 
are going to keep the feet to the fire of the administration and our 
friends in the House to make sure they follow up on their commitments 
to deal with the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from Florida be granted the floor as soon as I finish.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.