Kevin Brady

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, this act ought to probably be entitled the Get Foster Children Out of the System Into a Safe Home As Soon As Possible Act, as it has real consequences for our foster children. There have been so often foster children, even in the best system, that are lost in that system. These delays can be as, Tom DeLay has told you, just so harmful for them. Moving them forward is the right thing to do, and it is a possible thing to do. Each week on TV, we watch on ``Home Makeover'' a set of people come together and build a complete home for a family in one week. Why can't we find a good, safe loving home for children in 2 months? It is important we do this. Our family has been through two home studies in our adoption, and I know what a difference how soon and how accurate and how important these home studies can be done. We ought not let a State line get in the way of helping these children. I can tell you that Tom DeLay has been such an advocate and champion for children. When you see the work of Rio Bend, what he and his wife are doing, it is just remarkable. I strongly support this bill.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Well, let me just conclude with this. One of my communities, Conroe, the veterans and I have worked for a number of years to try to make this a reality. This is great news for our veterans; and, more importantly, I think it is great news for all those communities that will get help for their veterans care, and I will just tell you that we are grateful for Chairman Walsh's leadership. This is just awful good news.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Chairman, as you know, many veterans live hours from major hospitals, making it very difficult for them to get the care they need; and oftentimes, for those who have to travel there two or three times a week, they have a terrible quality of life. That is why our local veterans health care clinics, known as Community-Based Outpatient Clinics, are just so important to deliver quality care for veterans. These have been stalled in recent years; yet, my understanding is that in this bill there is a strong commitment of $25 million to build the highest priority Community-Based Outpatient Clinics in the country. Is that the case?

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I appreciate the bipartisan leadership on this bill. I think sometimes in Washington we would do better to not clear-cut the truth when it comes to issues like this. Madam Chairman, the truth is when natural disasters hit our forests, as they do in east Texas, our regulations really hinder our ability to recover that forest quickly. They do not help; they hinder it. This bill does the opposite. I strongly support it. Madam Chairman, in 1998 we had a windstorm that hit the Sabine, Angelina and Sam Houston National Forests here in east Texas, damaged about 200 million boardfeet of timber. As bad as that looks, and as big as that looks, you should have seen what Hurricane Rita did. The fourth largest hurricane to ever hit the gulf coast damaged nearly a million boardfeet of timber, and that is our number one, not only our number one economic driver in east Texas, but we really value our forests. We want to recover them, because that to us was a huge natural disaster. This bill will help us recover from disasters like this. All of them had salvageable timber; terrible Hurricane damage, but salvageable timber. But because of the large volume of timber that was damaged, the rapid decay of the dead wood, and procedural red tape and economic constraints, salvage operations, the ability to salvage this is limited. And if we do not do that, the down and damaged timber becomes hazardous fuel, endangering the public and firefighter safety. And all of the remaining undamaged timber becomes highly susceptible to other timber losses, because of bark beetles further impairing the forest health, and blue stain, which affects the timber itself. So failure to remove salvageable timber impedes the restoration of some of our treasured habitat, such as threatened and endangered red cockheaded woodpecker and the Louisiana pine snake. Madam Chairman, delays to harvesting downed timber means delays and increased costs all across the board, and the ability in this bill to use alternative ways to do it makes healthier forests and better species. Madam Chairman, I strongly support this bill.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, Congressman Meek from Florida, for allowing me to reclaim my time. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my good friend, Congressman Boustany from Louisiana, in urging our colleagues not to forget the victims of Hurricane Rita as they determine priority funding in the Hurricane supplemental bill that is before the House and the Senate today. You may know, but, of course, last August Hurricane Katrina, the sixth largest Hurricane in gulf coast history hit the gulf coast. It sent a human tide of over half a million evacuees to Texas. And while our State was struggling with the unprecedented effects of that storm, its own coast took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita, the fourth largest storm in gulf coast history, just 3 weeks later. As Hurricane Rita grew into one of the most intense storms in recorded history, steering a path through Texas and along the Louisiana border, our State, and especially southeast and east Texas were in the midst of its unprecedented response to Hurricane Katrina. So our region not only took in evacuees, tens of thousands from Louisiana, and are thrilled that we did, we also took in 2.7 million evacuees from Hurricane Rita, the largest in history. Then the hurricane shifted; Hurricane Rita went right up those same communities that had already done so much. Rita delivered a devastating blow to the region. As this photo illustrates, the resulting physical damage was massive. The town of Sabine Pass was leveled. Further inland, entire communities, including houses, businesses, bridges, roads and utilities, were severely damaged or destroyed by Hurricane-force winds and torrential rains. Over 75,000 Texas homes were damaged or destroyed in Rita, $1 billion of our timber crop, the largest economic driver in east Texas; and today, 10 percent of our Rita evacuees have yet to return. Without homes or without places to work, we are again in a real fight for our lives. Today we have a number of our Texas leaders, southeast Texas Recovery Team in Washington meeting with the White House, meeting with House leaders, meeting with FEMA and HUD to talk about how Texas can recover. We had, as I said, 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Many of those have temporary blue tarps on today that are starting to deteriorate or blow off. When the hurricane season hits, we will put more and more people out of their homes. We are asking for about $1 billion in community development block grant funds in housing to help repair those homes, to help get people back in their homes, to help southeast Texas recover. We are also asking for equal treatment. These are all photos from the Beaumont Enterprise and their special edition on Rita, showing the damage from this region. But as we rebuild, we find that, unfortunately, the Federal Government split Hurricane Rita along State lines, literally provided one assistance to our Louisiana neighbors, and a different level to our Texas neighbors, which is terribly unfair and creates a terrible burden on our Texas communities, many of whom are poor, many with very high minority and poverty rates, all of them eager to help our Louisiana neighbors, but also eager to try to recover ourselves. So we are up here asking for the same 90/10 reimbursement rate of FEMA that our Louisiana folks have received for the exact same hurricane, same storm, same damage. Different treatment, same storm. It ought to be the same storm, same damage, same treatment. Mr. Speaker, let me close with this. This Congress, our government, are charged with a duty to wisely allocate precious taxpayer dollars. This hurricane supplement has become a magnet for some less-than- justified projects. Mr. Speaker, I can tell you this: that the Hurricane Rita assistance in schools of 90/10 and in housing are not only fair and justified, but will go a long way toward helping these communities who did so much for our Louisiana neighbors and are doing so much today to help them recover at a time of terrible need.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Constitutional Caucus headed by Mr. Bishop and Mr. Garrett, who are determined to make sure that government in Washington and in this country is limited to the constitutional role. I appreciate their leadership, because that is too often forgotten in this Chamber. One of the pieces of legislation that helps underscore that need is legislation to create a Federal Sunset Commission, legislation I authored 10 years ago. I have watched and worked in the State legislature in Texas to promote, and here is the benefits of it. What this does is this Commission seeks to abolish obsolete agencies and eliminate duplication by putting an expiration date on every agency and program where they must justify their existence to taxpayers or face elimination. What it does, in practice, is eliminate agencies that duplicate each other. And the last study showed that Federal programs, on average, duplicate five others. So we are wasting money terribly. As President Ronald Reagan said, the closest thing to immortality on this Earth is a Federal program. Our goal is to end immortality, make sure that Federal agencies are responsive to taxpayers and they need our precious tax dollars today; not what they were created for 100 years ago or 80 years ago, but do they deserve our tax dollars today? The fact of the matter is there is so much duplication, there is so much waste in this government, and we have 500-and-some different urban aid programs, 350 different economic development programs, more than 100 different job training programs, the war on drugs, multiple programs over about 17 different agencies. It is a terrible waste of tax dollars, and in this day and age when we are fighting a war against terrorism, when we have major deficits, we cannot afford this type of wasteful government. Our Constitution requires us to trim the Federal Government. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, our third President, wrote a letter to a friend at that time in his Presidency lamenting the fact that he was having trouble cutting back agencies that had outlived their usefulness. So the fight that we have is an historical fight. We have actually brought this bill up to a vote before in the House. It passed with 272 votes. It did not move further than that. But I am convinced that by assigning agencies, there will be no sacred cows, every agency has to justify their existence. In Texas we have eliminated 44 State agencies, saved over $1 billion. I am convinced here at the Federal level, done right in a bipartisan way with real commitment, we can save tax dollars. We can make Federal programs accountable to taxpayers and save dollars. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back, again with thanks to Mr. Bishop and Mr. Garrett for leading this caucus at such a key time in our Nation's history.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I concede the point of order at this time.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The purpose of this amendment is to request $2 billion for Texas to help specifically 400,000 of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees who are in our communities, to assist the educational costs of the nearly 40,000 students who we are educating today, and in addition to Hurricane Katrina, help pay for the increased public safety and law enforcement costs that have emerged since being host to our Katrina neighbors. For health care and mental health: $126 million. Services that have not been compensated again for their help. For critical infrastructure repairs: $408 million. Because most of the Nation does not know that Hurricane Rita caused tremendous devastation, landed, as I have said before, at a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, created more damage to the electrical grid than Hurricane Katrina, did more damage to the refinery capacity than Katrina, and did almost $1 billion of damage to our timber industry, which is our number one industry in most of the 22 counties directly affected by Rita. This request, headed by our Governor, Rick Perry, of Texas, made on behalf of the entire Texas congressional delegation, also asks for $54 million for transportation, repair of our roads and bridges from Hurricane Rita, $59 million for navigation waterway repairs. That is because Hurricane Rita caused a damage to our waterways that will require dredging and a great deal of repair. For our agriculture forestry and rural disaster assistance, $170 million, because much of Texas that opened their hearts to Katrina are the rural communities that abut Louisiana. They were the ones who opened their shelters for the Katrina victims, opened them a second time for the evacuation of the Houston and gulf coast area, and then on the third big hit actually Hurricane Rita devastated their communities. These are small rural communities and should be commended for all that they have done. This $170 million helps them recover and rebuild their agriculture economy. For social services, $125 million, mainly for the folks from Katrina but also for some of our dislocated Rita folks. And then $186 million for community redevelopment, because our recovery is complicated by our Katrina guests. As you know, we have moved them out of hotels into the available housing units; and because Texas had over 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed by Rita, we both no longer have houses for our own families and no housing for the work recovery crews to allow us to get back on our feet. This also requests $400 million to help pay for our schools who are educating our Katrina neighbors. Again, we are thrilled to have them. We know if the situation were reversed their hearts and homes would be open to us, but we also know that should that occur that there would be a heavy burden on those other States. We want to make sure that our communities, many of them small, many of them without big budgets, who have done exactly the right thing, exactly the right thing with Katrina and are struggling to recover from their own hurricane, to make sure they are not left behind.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Again, I appreciate the work this Appropriations Committee has done to help provide reimbursement for schools. We are hoping to get for this school year that full funding to help them. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. BRADY of Texas. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, while I may not agree, I concede the point of order.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. While I recognize the difficulty in making in order these amendments because of the way the bill has been written, and rightly so, the purpose of this amendment is to recognize that we ought not stick our schools with the bill for educating our Katrina students. Again, we have 47 States that are now educating students who fled Hurricane Katrina. Our State, our communities are educating almost 40,000 of them. These schools were the first ones to open their doors both as shelters, and then to try to provide some normalcy for these families who had nothing to go back to. The schools and the teachers, if you could have been there in Texas or in the other States to see what these schools did to embrace these families, you would know the importance that education has played in bringing some structure to these families from Louisiana and Mississippi. Unfortunately, in our earlier funding, while we recognized the need to reimburse these schools, the number of students, almost 158,000 of them, this body was not able to provide the minimum funding for them. It looks like for this school year, we will come in somewhere less than $4,000, around $4,000, yet the minimal expense is $6,000 as authorized by Congress. What this amendment does is, basically it does not cut money from any area, but simply reserves $400 million from Community Development Block Grant, it reserves that in abeyance until $400 million is provided to all the States that are housing our Katrina students. I will tell you again, every State has done a remarkable job. I am very proud of Texas, very proud of southeast Texas and east Texas and these schools and what they have done. I just think it is wrong when they have very little money as it is to require them to perhaps raise taxes or take money from other vital programs in order to do the right thing for our Louisiana and Mississippi neighbors. We ought not treat schools and communities, I think, with such disdain. This amendment is designed to raise the profile of our schools, to say thank you for the work that you are doing, and to attempt to provide some minimal reimbursement across the country for these schools for the work they are doing for our Katrina students.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to offer out of order Brady of Texas amendment No. 1, which would normally come at the end of the bill.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield back my time. Point of Order

Mr. BRADY of Texas. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, I thank Chairman Lewis for your work on disaster relief. The point of this amendment is to recognize that the money for disaster assistance ought to go with the victims. The fact of the matter is Hurricane Katrina caused tremendous devastation. I know that Texas is now hosting over 400,000 evacuees and educating nearly 40,000 students. We know other States are also opening their hearts and communities to these Katrina evacuees. This amendment says that $2 billion from our Community Development Block Grant funds shall be made available for the victims of Hurricane Katrina who are living outside their home State. What we want to do is make sure that they have the housing, the social services, the workforce employment services, all those needs that go with them. This amendment simply says that, as we have spent billions of dollars responding to Hurricane Katrina, that we not forget the victims of Hurricane Katrina who are in other States and who those communities are bearing the brunt of the expenses of hosting them and, in truth, as newspaper articles and studies reported today across the Nation show, that at the pace of recovery in Louisiana, these States, like Texas, will be host to our Katrina neighbors for many months, perhaps many years. It is important that we not punish the States and communities that open their hearts to these victims, that we not send them a bill that says, thank you for your generosity; here, pay for it, raise your taxes, bear the burden; we have no interest in you. This amendment makes sure that the dollars follow the victims, the evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, and that we not punish the generosity of the surrounding States who did so much for our Katrina evacuees.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chairman, I appreciate Chairman Lewis and the hard-working members of the Appropriations Committee who are doing a difficult job trying to balance the needs of our war on terror as well as disaster recovery in the gulf coast. This amendment seeks to do a simple thing, to require that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development use the most accurate and timely data for making decisions on where the unmet needs are in the gulf coast for housing. What this says in effect is that the director shall apply the most timely and accurate data available relating to all damages from such hurricanes and the total number of relocated evacuees. In other words, rather than use the FEMA numbers, which are slow, often inaccurate and, in fact, do not track the evacuees from Katrina to other States, nor because Hurricane Rita occurred after Hurricane Katrina, many of the needs in Texas are still being applied for and have not yet registered. So, without this amendment, the HUD Secretary would be making important decisions on housing and repair and renovation without having a true, accurate picture of where the needs truly are. I know that in Texas we have more than 75,000 homes that have been destroyed or damaged in Hurricane Rita, much of which are not yet in the system. The last decision that the HUD Secretary made, 98 percent of the money went to Louisiana and Mississippi, 1 percent to Texas. Yet Hurricane Rita actually landed a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, wiped out much of East Texas, did billions of dollars of damage, and yet our people are still waiting for help in housing, repair and renovation. So this is simply an amendment to require accurate and timely data and should this not be allowed today. I hope perhaps we can work with you, because I think we all want the Secretary to use the best picture of these very complicated hurricane issues. Madam Chairman, I yield back my time. Point of Order

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Woodville High School Fighting Eagles on their 2005 2A Texas State Baseball Championship. Woodville, Texas, is a wonderful community in Tyler County and a proud part of the Eighth Congressional District. For any community in America a state championship is quite an accomplishment and one worth honoring. While the young men and their coaches worked their way through each level of competition, everyone in the community rallied behind the team driving all over the state to cheer them on to a State Championship victory. Team starting pitcher Casey Beck was named most valuable player at the State Championship Game. The team clinched the championship with a victory over Holliday High School located near Wichita Falls, Texas, by a score of 2 to 1. In a story that belongs in a climatic Hollywood sports movie, Beck, after throwing 134 pitches in his team's semifinal victory the day before was called in as a relief pitcher in the last two innings of the championship game. The Austin American Statesman quoted Beck as saying ``My arm was really weak. When I was warming up between innings, I had nothing. Coach came over and asked me if I had one inning left, and I told them I'd give it my all. Then that became two innings.'' Mr. Speaker, there is something else that makes the people of Tyler County and the City of Woodville stand out. These families and businesses first opened their homes to Hurricane Katrina victims, then to Rita evacuees from other areas of the state. Following their awesome display of compassion and generosity, Hurricane Rita with 150 mph winds, unexpectedly made Woodville a direct target. In light of the recent Gulf Coast hurricane season, and specifically Hurricane Rita that devastated Tyler County and its surrounding communities, the team's victory has helped keep this tight knit community even stronger. Casey Beck's performance in the championship game represents the attitude and ``get it done'' spirit of the people of Tyler County. Regardless of how tired they are they are going to give it one or two more innings down the stretch, face down one hurricane and then another. The team was coached on to victory by Head Coach Neil Hennigan and Varsity Assistant Coaches Joe Wilroy, Beau Burnett and Reggie Williams. The members of the championship team included: Casey Beck, Braeden Riley, Reese Winters, Jordan O'Neal, Zack Rigby, Daniel Spivey, Jess Conner, Trevor Rainey, Aaron Hicks, Evan Fortenberry, Logan Alec, Justin Kirkpatrick, Allen Mitchum, Jacoby Williams, Josh Kirkpatrick, Chad Prince, Joel Gentz, Brian MacGinnis, Paul Price, Cullen Williams, and Jack Hickman. These young men and their coaches have together accomplished so much and made a community and region so proud. Mr. Speaker, I hope the House of Representatives will join me in honoring the Fighting Eagles and the community they represent.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, there is actually bipartisan support for reducing taxes in the AMT on American families. If I could go back in time and stop that Congress from ever creating it, I would have because the principle of it has always been so wrong. The principle was our Tax Code is so complex, it is so full of loopholes that it really is not fair anymore. So rather than fix the problem, let us just create a second type of tax, make people create second books, second type of accounts and then try to catch them another way. It was a terrible principle to begin with; and because it was not put in place, it was put in place for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way and now affecting more and more of our American taxpayers who should never have to fool with this. The question today is, how do we do it? Do we do it as proposed in this issue, to raise taxes to pay for it? Or as Chairman Camp has said, this House has voted overwhelmingly to provide tax relief to these families the right way, by just exempting them and not raising their taxes to pay for it. That is exactly the right way to do it. And another, I think, bad side effect of this proposal that we are debating today is that we take away the tax savings on capital gains and dividends. That is very important to America's seniors, very important to seniors in Texas. And what I especially appreciate is that since this Republican Congress lowered taxes on dividends and capital gains, more and more people, especially seniors, are investing for their retirement, and more companies are not just promoting their stock value. They are actually returning money to dividends to our investors, to our neighbors. And so they are not just saying we have got a great company. They are actually showing it, showing us the money through dividend relief. That is very important in a time where you just saw last week that America has a negative savings rate, a negative. We are going in the hole more and more each year, American families are. We ought to encourage savings. We ought to encourage dividends. We ought to encourage investment, and we ought not raise their taxes in order to provide relief from AMT. And I respectfully oppose this and urge us to work in a bipartisan measure to do this the right way.

Mr. BRADY of Texas

Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Dr. James T. Willerson, President of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H). On September 1, 2005, Dr. Willerson, along with UTHSC-H Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael D. McKinney, M.D, was given the task by Houston Mayor Bill White to transform a portion of the George R. Brown Convention Center (GRB) in Houston, Texas, from a convention center to a medical triage center, adjacent to the shelter created for more than 5,000 Hurricane Katrina survivors. The UT Health Science Center acted quickly to design, organize and prepare clinic space to serve evacuees at the George R. Brown Convention Center, which opened as an additional safe haven to Houston's Astrodome, which quickly achieved capacity within a day of opening. Over about three weeks, more than 6,000 volunteers operated the UT Clinic and managed more than 9,000 patient visits. The volunteers included UT physicians, nurses, dentists, public health professionals, students and administrative staff as well as spouses of these professionals. The clinic also included other volunteers and health professionals from Texas Medical Center institutions and individuals from across the country who answered the call to help in the aftermath of this national crisis. These volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure welcome, comfort and care for our neighbors in need. Services provided with expertise and compassion in the UT Clinic included: emergency aid, pediatric care, immunizations, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, pharmacy, laboratory services, imaging and vision components, dental care and mental health services. Several dedicated professionals from the UT Health Science Center worked to ensure that healthcare concerns at the evacuee sites were communicated with state and local officials. Scott Lillibridge, M.D., the Director of the Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness, provided critical technical assistance and general epidemiology support at numerous evacuee facilities. Faculty and staff conducted rapid health assessments daily at evacuee sites. This information allowed Dr. Ward Casscells, the John Edward Tyson Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Vice President of Biotechnology at the Health Science Center, and Dr. Lillibridge to continually inform public health officials of evacuee health status and coordinate efforts with FEMA, CDC, the Red Cross, the City of Houston, Harris County, and the Texas Commissioner of Health. Each of the UT Health Science Center's six schools--contributed in one way or another to the Hurricane Katrina response. Dr. Willerson encouraged his deans to seek every possible avenue to help during this time of crisis. He approved of the placement of students from Tulane Medical School and allocated space for the displaced Tulane faculty for their medical education, resident training and research at the UT Medical School. The medical school is also hosting 37 residents from Tulane so additional interruptions to their education will not occur. Dr. Willerson is an exemplary leader who through his actions in this most recent crisis was able to show compassion in the midst of quick decision-making. With the help of a superb leadership team, headed by Dr. McKinney, the staff performed to the highest standards of professionalism and compassion. With the encouragement, support and guidance of Dr. Willerson, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston responded in countless ways as health professionals, lay volunteers, concerned citizens and caring friends. Mr. Speaker, Dr. Willerson and the hundreds of UTHSC-Houston professionals who answered the call to aid and assist their fellow Americans deserve the acclaim and gratitude of the Nation.