Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Go right ahead.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I can appreciate that. If you don't mind me pursuing that line of questioning. I can most certainly appreciate what the junior Senator is saying about the reluctance of the House of Representatives and the administration at this point because I have yet to receive any letter or assurance, but it is right now the House of Representatives that basically would be willing to make loans to the devastated cities in the gulf coast, but would insist that those loans be paid back, when not insisting on that for other loans that have been given to Puerto Rico, and to Florida, and to Alaska, and to other places, which were waived. I understand the House of Representatives, while allowing others to borrow this money and then ask for forgiveness, would not allow Louisiana that same privilege. I understand the position of the Senator is that we be treated the same, as a first-class State, not a second- class State. I know that is your position. But it does concern the senior Senator that we would have to be dictated to by the House of Representatives, that we would have to be treated in some second-class fashion. I am also appreciating that, while the administration has given you an assurance that they do not intend to treat us as second-class citizens, I would feel better, before we left tonight, if we had something in writing from the administration that they think Louisiana deserves the same treatment. For that reason, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas--that we would deserve the same treatment as other States. That is why I am in a situation here where I want to commend you for the compromise we have tried to reach today. It is, indeed, tempting. But we are going to have to go home, if we do not get something from this administration, and say we have agreed to a second-class status, and our people have been hurt and offended and left by a FEMA that is not operating very well. That is my concern. I know you and I agree about that, but do you want to go ahead and answer?

Ms. LANDRIEU. If the Senator will yield, I can most certainly appreciate that perspective. I definitely agree it is extremely important to not just give speeches but to get something that is real for our people. But because we have no written commitment from the administration, and no resolution, and no letter, and no written commitment from the House, no assurance, no resolution, no promise to pass the legislation that you have presented and outlined, I am not sure even if you and I could manage--because there is not very much disagreement between the two of us; but our colleagues have some disagreements--if we could pass this legislation in the Senate that it is actually really going to do anything for people at home other than say the Senate has come together. It would not be the first time the Senate has come together, as the Senator knows, because this Senate is ready to pass emergency health care legislation, and this Senate is ready to pass emergency education legislation, and this Senate is ready to pass--and already has passed-- help for small businesses. So it is not the Senate, as the junior Senator----

Ms. LANDRIEU. Just 1 minute. Let me finish. The Senate is not necessarily the problem. We have been amazingly bipartisan. Our committee chairs and ranking members, as the Senator knows, have done yeoman's work. And in the Small Business Committee that you and I serve on, we have already passed that legislation. But the senior Senator remains concerned that we still do not have any written assurance or a resolution or something we could take home to our mayors, et cetera. Let me say one other point. I have read carefully the proposed language about lending Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas this money, and then making us pay it back when no one else in the country has been forced to do that. I have read that language. I have also read the language about who is eligible. I ask the junior Senator, are you confident in the language--and I do not have it in front of me, but I can call it up, not that it is filed--that the sheriffs of Louisiana would be included in this proposed compromise? Is the Senator from Louisiana indicating that the sheriffs of our State are absolutely, positively included?

Ms. LANDRIEU. OK.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I have not yet expressed an objection, but I am considering it on the grounds--I am not yet expressing objection, but I am considering it, respectfully, having complimented the junior Senator for the great work he has done, because I am hesitant to accept terms of aid that are applied only to us and to no one else, and not because the junior Senator objects or other Senators, but because the House of Representatives, which is in control of the Republican leadership, has decided that the only way that they will amend the law is to force us alone, uniquely, to have to agree to pay it back, when no one else in America, in the past or the future, will be required to do so. That is a hard thing for the senior Senator to agree to, but I am considering it, if maybe that is our only option. But you can understand why I might be a little bit exercised about the House of Representatives saying to people who are desperate--like on the front page of the National Geographic--we know you are suffering, we know you need help, there is no question you have no money to pay your bills, there is no question that we have lent other people money and forgiven their loans, there is no question that this is the worst natural disaster in the history of the country--but the only way we will compromise with you, Senator Landrieu and Senator Vitter and Senator Frist and Senator Reid, is if your desperate people promise to pay the loan back. And, by the way, we are only making the law for you.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Hold on. I will not yield at this moment. If someone-- --

Ms. LANDRIEU. Can I answer that?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Can I answer that?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the calling of the roll.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes, I would.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to speak as in morning business. If any other Senator comes and wants to speak about an amendment on the underlying bill, I would be pleased to wrap up my remarks.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I would be happy to, and I thank the Senator for his leadership because the Grassley-Baucus bill does a couple of important things that are essential for the rebuilding and emergency needs of a population--not just the poor but the middle income and those who had private insurance the day before Katrina hit. The Baucus-Grassley bill allows the States to know that they are going to be reimbursed for the care they are providing to people who have virtually no insurance. For a State such as Louisiana, whose legislature may be meeting in the next few weeks, with a billion-dollar shortfall looming, I say to Senator Durbin, it is critical that the States of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and Texas have some idea now about what the Federal Government is going to do regarding their insurance. We share it 70/30. The State cannot put up a 30-percent match. This bill waives that match so that our States can start making good budget decisions at a very difficult time, in addition to providing health care for those who are 200 percent or below of poverty--which in our State is only $18,000 or $20,000--to make sure that people have health insurance. But for middle-income families, working families, and even wealthy families that had health insurance, this bill allows them--even if their employers have gone under or taken bankruptcy or closed their doors and laid them off--to keep their health insurance for a few months, for 6 months or 12 months, depending on their category. A Senator said on the floor, Senator Durbin, that people can get health insurance, they can get health care. Yes, in some way; they can go to an emergency room and wait for 3 days. But if they want to go to their doctor's office to whom they have been going for their whole life, and take their child to their pediatrician and they now don't have health insurance, unless we pass this bill, they can't go knock on the door of their pediatrician, for example, unless they give them a credit card or cash because there is no health insurance without the Baucus-Grassley bill. People who don't have a home, don't have a church or don't have a school now do not even have health care because we have to go home on a 10-day break and leave them wondering where they are going to get their medicine. That is what the bill does, I say to Senator Durbin.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I do not know, I say to Senator Durbin. That is a puzzlement for us. I do not have a good answer for that. All I can say is there are 2 million people displaced, many towns are destroyed, many communities, both urban and suburban, rural as well as highly dense. Neighborhoods of black and white, Hispanic and Asian, poor and middle- income are wondering the same thing. Why does Congress keep giving money to FEMA? FEMA is not functioning very well. So when our Governors and our mayors and our sheriffs ask for a little bit of help with health insurance and education and the basics to turn running water on--we have had enough bottled water. Please don't send us any more bottled water. We have plenty. We need to turn the faucets on so water will come out so a small business that wants to operate can actually function with some water. You cannot have a business operating without water. That is what we need. We have asked for these emergency things, to be told we do not have the money. I am going to sit down. In this amendment, we are asking for four or five things, for education, for health care, for immediate needs, for help for some hospitals that stayed up. Three hospitals stayed up the whole time in the region. If we do not help them, these hospitals will close, employees will be laid off, and whatever modest health care system we have for the region will basically be dysfunctional. But what we really want--we want those things, but what we want is some action taken before we leave. We can vote on these individually. We did get a commitment from the administration that they will do more than $300 million. Because if we do not get more than $300 million before we leave here, the city of New Orleans, the Archdiocesan--the Catholic Diocese--or St. Tammany Parish, or some parts of it, or Plaquemines or St. Bernard or any number of other places, I say to Senator Durbin, will have to lay off workers who then will lose their health insurance, lose whatever means they have of keeping themselves and their families intact, and the situation will be spiraling downward, not spiraling upward. The Senator has been very gracious. I am going to reserve the remainder of whatever time I have, but that is what we are asking for, and I hope we can get something done before we leave for this week-and- a-half break.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I object. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask to speak for as much time as I may consume. I understand there will be other amendments that may be offered. We are trying to debate and pass the Defense appropriations bill. I thank the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Hawaii for their good work in trying to move this bill through because they have done an outstanding job. I find myself in a very unusual position because, of course, I voted for cloture because I want to pass this bill. We absolutely have to pass a Defense appropriations bill. Unfortunately, we have had 48 soldiers from Louisiana die, many more wounded. Families are still mourning those losses and we have to figure out a way to get the job done over there, and get it done right and get our soldiers home. We need to move on with this bill. As my colleagues know, at about 4:30 this morning this bill will pass under the cloture rules and we are going to go on. But I have decided to take some time until 4:30 this morning to talk about a war that is going on at home and that is a war we are fighting on the gulf coast to stay alive, to protect our way of life, to keep the American flag flying over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I probably will not take all 94 minutes at this moment, but I will probably take that and even some more as we move through the evening trying to get some closure on a subject we have now been talking about, unfortunately, it seems, with no end in sight, or no resolution on the horizon to try to get some real money-- not photo ops, not promises, not press conferences, not visits, but some real money to some real people in Louisiana who need help, our cities that were devastated, our parishes that have been crippled, our law enforcement that has been set back on its heels. Three hospitals stayed open the entire time in the New Orleans metropolitan area to provide desperately needed emergency health care in a region of almost 1.5 million people. Heroically, they stayed up, and because they did, one of those hospitals cannot claim insurance because the only way they can claim it is if they closed down. They stayed open so they may lose their hospital if we do not try to get some money. The reason I do not feel the least bit guilty standing here asking for it on this bill is because the underlying Defense bill--if the staff will bring me the final numbers of this bill--has a tremendous amount of money we are spending in Iraq for our defense and for the standing up of Iraq. While I have questions about some of the things we are doing, some of the things we have done, and how we are going to get ourselves back home after stabilizing it, I have to say when I went on the Web site today, it was hard to actually read. The people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are going to be quite surprised if they go on this U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web site and pull up this gulf region division because they might think this is about the gulf region right here in the United States. But it is not. It is about the gulf region in Iraq. In the underlying bill we are passing, and we need to pass, I am trying to get the administration--the leadership here to at least agree to take $1 billion of the FEMA money we have already allocated, $62 billion, and send to Louisiana to begin some construction projects and some standing up of some critical programs to keep cities, parishes, and law enforcement whole as we begin our rebuilding program from the largest natural disaster that ever occurred. That is all we are trying to do is give $1 billion to the cities and parishes so they can hold heart and soul together, so as we pass additional help, whether it comes from levee construction, or whether it comes from small business, or whether it comes from health care, the entities of the government, the parish presidents, the cities, the sheriffs, the police officers, and the fire departments are there to help us build a region. I was surprised to see on the Web page that this is the goal we have in Iraq: to establish a government, provide security, enhance basic services to the Government of Iraq. It sounds like something we are trying to do in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--provide security, enhance basic services, and keep our cities, our police forces, our fire departments operating through the worst and largest natural disaster in the history of the United States. We are getting ready to send billions of dollars to Iraq, finance billions of tax cuts for other people, finance billions for programs. We have already given $62 billion to FEMA that everyone says does not work, and I can personally testify to that, having been in the State now almost every day since this hurricane. We cannot seem to get an agreement to get $1 billion for the people of the gulf coast to keep their security open, their basic services operating, their electricity running, and their water turned on. We have been working for weeks diligently on these 815 projects in Iraq for ports of entry, military facilities, police facilities, fire facilities, prisons, and courts. The last time I checked the New Orleans court system, we did not even have a court operating. The last time I checked, the supreme court had moved to Zachary. The supreme court used to be operating in New Orleans until Katrina came. The whole supreme court went to Zachary, LA. They do not even have a court building to operate in. I am all for this bill. To my knowledge, I have never voted against a Defense appropriations bill and do not intend to tonight, but because Senator Vitter and I have been asking for some money directly, not even new money, not even money out of this bill, for the House of Representatives to send us a commitment, for the President to send us a commitment of $1 billion to our sheriffs, to our police force, to our firefighters for 3 months, to keep them operating, is it any surprise that I cannot sit in my chair and smile while we are sending all of this money to stand up public works in Iraq--354 planned projects in water treatment, sewer projects, buildings for health and education; 1,091 projects, including schools, primary health care centers, hospitals, and public buildings? This is what my city looks like. Actually, this is not New Orleans. This is probably Waveland or Bay St. Louis, but it could be New Orleans. It could be Slidell. This is what the gulf coast of the United States looks like today. Most of it is gone. These are the cities Senator Vitter and I and our delegation have been trying to get help to. I do not see any houses here, but maybe someone does. I do not know how we collect ad valorem taxes to pay for police and fire protection. There are no stores people can shop in to generate the sales tax necessary to keep the mayor and city hall functioning. When we pass tax credits, which we might want to do and have already done to entice businesses to come back, where would they go to get a permit? When they file their plans for construction, who would review them? When they have to file their plan to meet the EPA standards that would be required before they could build here, who would be there to take their application? This photo is what my constituents look like. I wouldn't be surprised if this man was in the Army or the Navy. Maybe he is a Reserve officer. I wouldn't be surprised at all because I have thousands of them who put the uniform on and went to Iraq and came back, and this is what they have come back to. I have an administration that is going to pass this Defense bill to put electricity in Baghdad, build schools in Baghdad, and will not give the Louisiana delegation $1 billion--out of $62 billion that has already been allocated so it wouldn't cost anybody a penny--to help keep the lights on in the cities that were destroyed. This is what my people look like. I don't know how many times they have to cry. I am sorry she doesn't have a lobbyist to send to Washington. I happen to be her lobbyist. Here is one for the books. ``Here lies Vera. God help us.'' I think this grave is in New Orleans. I am not certain. But neighbors in the middle of the flood, when no one would come to get them, took this 65- year-old woman who was killed in the flood and built a grave for her and wrote ``Here lies Vera. God help us,'' before they left. This is a picture of a woman who the news media does not think a lot of--not all of them, but a lot of them don't think she is self-reliant. We don't have self-reliant people in Louisiana because we have the nerve to come up here and ask for money. That is our money that we put in the Treasury. We don't have self-reliant people, one of the newspapers said, in Louisiana. Our people put money in the Federal Treasury thinking they belonged to the United States of America, so when one county or one parish or one State is hurt, the other 49 might come to their aid. That is what the United States is about. This woman looks pretty self-reliant to me. She does not have much, but you know what. She has her two children in her arms. And if she had three, I am sure she would have figured out how to bring the other one on her back. She brought them to safety. This woman may be complaining, but I can tell you I have seen a lot of people who have been through a lot of stuff, and they still come up to me and say: Senator, we appreciate everything everybody is doing for us. I just wish you would hurry up. Not everybody is complaining. But let me put it down right now: I am complaining. This Senator is complaining about the treatment that our people have received. I tried to be patient. I tried to say: Fine, FEMA is not working. I understand it. We all made a mistake. We all messed up. We put it where it can't work. We put someone in charge who didn't know what he was doing. We gave them money, they can't spend it, so let me just have $1 billion of the $62 billion that they have. There is $43 billion sitting there they cannot even use. Let me just please get it to my firemen, to my police officers, to the mayors to let them operate for 3 more months. I have to be told: Senator, I am sorry. We want to go home on a break. You know what. We are not leaving until 4:30 in the morning. We might go home on a break, but it will be 4:30 tonight. Right after the storm, a lot of people didn't have electricity. After hurricanes you don't have a lot of electricity, so people are used to it. After about a week or 2 weeks, the electricity comes on, but of course a lot of things are ruined in your house. But I still have places with no electricity. How do you get businesses to come back if they don't have electricity? I still have places that don't have running water. Please stop sending us bottled water. We have enough. It is not the bottles we need, it is the faucets that need to get turned on. But we are going to stand here and pass a bill delivering on power for Iraq. A total of 2,760 megawatts of power have been added to the grid in Iraq to service more than 5 million Iraqi homes, and I can't get $1 billion to help keep electrical workers on the ground in New Orleans turning on the power in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama. We never have any money for anything, but here in the Corps of Engineers budget here is $4.3 billion allocated from supplemental appropriations for general system improvements for electricity. The World Bank estimates the total necessity to be $12 billion, so I am sure we are going to come up with the other $8 billion to turn the lights on in Iraq. But the people who produce the electricity in the United States of America to turn on lights everywhere in the country, from Chicago to New York to California, can't get the lights turned on in their own backyard because nobody around here can find $1 billion to give to us. They say: Senator, how do you know FEMA is not working? I have been home just about every day and have been to most of the shelters, talked to most of my mayors, talked to my sheriffs, talked to everybody at home, trying to be patient, understanding they are working little kinks out. But let me tell you what comes into our office on a daily basis. Phone calls to my office: The attached pages are records of some [underline some] of the calls received in the last few days. Nearly all of them from constituents who have not received any assistance from the Federal Government or Red Cross. Some of the first calls were for search and rescue, and in the 35 days since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, countless Louisianans are in no better shape than they were on the day the hurricane hit. I am sure Senator Vitter has a stack at least this thick, if not thicker, as has every member of our congressional delegation, and even some of our neighbors from the neighboring States. They have calls recorded--names, phone numbers. When people say, Senator, how do you know FEMA is not working, I do have an idea it might not be working very well. So we could take $1 billion from FEMA, send it through an already existing program called the Community Disaster Loan Program that worked in New York, that worked in Puerto Rico, that has worked everywhere in the country when disasters strike, and transfer some of that money there and just give it to our cities, our sheriffs, our law enforcement, and the three hospitals that stood up. Not the 21 other hospitals that are closed, not all the other needs that we have, from levees to environment to housing to education to health care--none of that. We can wait for that until we get back. Just keep us operating while we are on vacation. We have yet to hear from the White House, from the House of Representatives. I know the Senate would pass such a proposal, but the reason I cannot accept the passage from the Senate is because all that would be is a Senate-passed bill. I am sure the Senate would pass it unanimously, but it would pass and it would sit and no one in Louisiana or Mississippi would get help because until the House of Representatives acts, until the President says that he will do this, it cannot be done. I know the President wants to help. He has been down to the State. He recognizes that FEMA is having some problems. He has said he wants to help. But we just cannot keep waiting. So I am going to stay here through the evening. I am going to continue to negotiate. I am going to continue to talk with the Senators handling this bill. I am going to continue to have telephone calls and meetings with anybody who would like to talk about this subject and see what we can do to get this money committed, in real dollars, in any bill in any way for this one community disaster assistance program. Then we need a commitment when we get back to have a vote on Grassley-Baucus, a bill that gives emergency health care that this Senate has already approved in a bipartisan way, and three amendments to that bill. They would cover some emergency education for elementary and secondary grades and emergency education for our universities that are teetering on the brink of collapse--all of them, public and private, and historically black colleges included. If we can have a vote when we come back--the Senate can vote no, the House can vote no, or you know what--the President can veto the bills. But at least I will think I did everything I could to try to get people help. If the President wants to veto the bills, fine. If the Senate wants to vote them down, fine. If the House wants to vote them down, fine. But at least we can get a commitment to get votes on those bills, get the $1 billion now, and we will come back. I assure you we will be working on this not for weeks but for months, for perhaps years--until we stand up this region. I am not one who doesn't believe in nation building. Some people don't think we should be engaged in it. I happen to be inspired by the idea that maybe the United States has some things we could share in a positive way and help countries to achieve what we have achieved, which is remarkable in the history of the world. But I have to tell you, the first nation we need to be building is our own. We have had the largest natural disaster in the history of the country, Katrina, followed by Rita, which was a vicious and very tough storm, and in between those things a disastrous collapsing of a levee system that put the Nation's energy coast underwater--or a large segment of it. It put 10 feet of water in a major American city and virtually has shut it down and shut down the surrounding areas. I have to walk around the Senate for 31 days pretending. Are people saying to me, What can we do to help? We have laid down many things that can help. Many committees have responded. Yet the only thing that has happened for 31 days is that we have given FEMA money, and they can't seem to get it out. So we need to try something a little different. We need to try something a little different. I wish FEMA was the way it used to be, and maybe it will be again. But it is not today, and it won't be next week, and it won't be next month. We can't keep waiting for FEMA to organize itself. We are the Congress of the United States. We are Senators. We understand these things. We have been through them before. And to just keep doing the same old thing and expecting different results is crazy. It doesn't make any sense. It is not right. Let us figure out a way to take $1 billion out of FEMA, transfer it either through this bill or through another vehicle, and send the money to our parishes, to our cities, to our police, to our fire for 3 months of operation, which is already authorized in the law. But the reason it can't be done administratively is because there is a legislative cap of $5 million. The budget for the city of New Orleans alone, salaries only, is $20 million a month. Why would anybody think that a program that only allows you to borrow $5 million would help them? We have to find $1 billion, approximately, to keep these entities up and running, or by the time we get back in 10 days they might have already had to lay off police, fire, and critical personnel. How do you start building up again once you have closed down your city hall, shut down your fire department, shut down your police department, and people have had to go out and search for jobs elsewhere? How do you recruit them to come back? How do you get them back after you have broken their spirits and laid them off is beyond me. Let me correct myself. No matter what Congress does, having represented this State for a long time, I want to say that you are not going to break our spirit. It has been around a long time. We are a pretty old place. We were here before the country and are worth saving. We will figure it out. But people in Louisiana are having a hard time figuring out how we can spend weeks on the Defense appropriations bill, which is doing more than supporting our troops, which is building up Iraq, actually, with a gulf coast region. I want to repeat, gulf region division. We don't even have a gulf region division of the Corps of Engineers in the United States of America today. We have a New Orleans district which covers the southern part of Louisiana. We don't even have a gulf coast region. That would be an advancement. But we have one in Iraq. Meanwhile, the gulf coast of this United States, the heart of the energy industry, looks something like this with the water down. As I said many times, while there is a lot of vacationing that goes on in the gulf coast, particularly along the coast of Mississippi, we have enjoyed that beautiful coastline for years, and we have enjoyed the beautiful sandy beaches in Alabama. Most of the people in the coast of Louisiana and many in Mississippi and Alabama work at the ports. They work at shipbuilding. They are shipbuilders or they are commercial fishermen who put food on the table that everybody in America eats, and around the world. They light up Chicago, and they are proud of it. Do you know what the National Geographic said about it? I think this is a very reputable publication, and it is written, I am very proud to say, with the help of the Times-Picayune, our newspaper which has been in the city I think as long as the city has been there, evacuated itself. They are writing the paper in Baton Rouge and printing it in Houma. We don't even have a newspaper in the city of New Orleans, not the major newspaper. We have several other good publications, and they are all struggling to stay in business. But with nobody in the city, where would you deliver your paper and to whom would you sell the advertising? There are no businesses in the city that are operating very well. But our newspaper, thank goodness, is still working. They collaborated with the National Geographic and the Dallas Morning News and put together this amazing report on Hurricane Katrina, ``Why It Became a Manmade Disaster and Where It Could Happen Next.'' I highly recommend it for reading here and around the country. On page 49, it talks about an economic powerhouse brought to its knees. We are not a charity case in Louisiana. We are an economic powerhouse, and we have been so for over 350 years. I reminded my colleagues today, thank God for President's like Thomas Jefferson who understood borrowing money and what you borrow it for. He borrowed money from the Treasury and bought the Louisiana Purchase for 3 cents an acre because he knew that this country could not grow and meet its destiny, that western expansion and getting to the West was impossible without the Mississippi River. Andrew Jackson went down there after he fought one war and defended it again. Why? Because after he won the first war, the British tried to come and take New Orleans because if they could take New Orleans, we could never be the country we are. Thank God Andrew Jackson knew about it, and thank goodness the storm didn't topple his statue, which is still in Jackson Square. An economic powerhouse brought to its knees. Eight hundred manned and thousands of unmanned platforms are in the Gulf of Mexico. The largest platform, Mars, is teetering on its side. They cannot produce oil and gas. We are trying to get it stood up again. If anybody wants to know why the price is going up, it is because this monster hurricane hit the heart of the oil and gas industry. Despite our best efforts to protect these infrastructures, despite begging for decades--decade after decade after decade--to restore our marsh, to protect the investment this country has made, for 200 years we have been turned down time and time again. So now it is time to pay the piper. And I am sorry if it is going to cost $40 billion. I am sorry that is what it is going to cost over the next 10 to 20 years to stand this powerhouse up again. If anybody wants to check the figures, just come to the Hart Building on the 7th floor, and I will go over every single dollar with you. Do you know what the biggest ports are in America? It is not New York, it is not Seattle, and it is not Houston. It is the Port of South Louisiana, the Port of New Orleans and the Port of Baton Rouge. We dwarf the other ports. We dwarf them. Our port comes up here and asks for some money, and they get told they are a charity case. They have been taking grain out of Kansas for 200 years. We have been draining the whole continental United States for 200 years. We have been shipping everything--goods--all over the world for 200 years. And I have to hear that when our port comes here for help, maybe not even a grant, just a loan to get them through the next 3 or 4 months until they can get back up on their feet, that there is something un-American about them, they need to be more self-reliant. Over 9,000 miles of pipeline connect the gulf with the Eastern United States. We have laid pipelines. No one in America wants them, but we have been laying them down for a long time. Why? Because we have oil and gas. We believe in energy, energy independence. We don't think we should get everything from Saudi Arabia. We would like America to be more independent, so we produce some oil and gas, and we make no apologies for it. But when you lay these pipelines and do not invest in the marsh in which you lay them down and you let it erode and the saltwater comes in and you levee your rivers for channelization and you don't invest in the technology and science that we know would protect our marsh, catastrophes happen. Unfortunately, as in every case, the poor have suffered the worst. But they are not the only ones who have suffered. Middle-class families, very successful, money in the bank, house paid for, children through college, looking forward to the next 10 or 15 years, 20 years maybe, and they deserve it; they have worked hard all of their lives, they have paid their taxes, they have kept up with their interests, they go to church every week, and this is what they look like today. They are told to be more self-reliant? I do not know how much more self-reliant people can be. I will continue to explain why our region is an economic powerhouse, why it needs to be so again, why we need to rebuild it, and why, unfortunately, it is going be more expensive than it should have been because of the things we should have been doing for the last 40 years and haven't, the investments the Federal Government should have made and didn't, even when they knew that this was inevitable. Yet there are some things that we didn't do at our State level. And yes, there are some things we didn't do at our city level. But again, this river does not serve only the 4.5 million people who live in Louisiana, it serves the 300 million people who live in this Nation and the billions of people who live in this world and depend on trade for prosperity and for commerce and for peace, because the more we trade with each other, the more we know each other, the more we can rely on each other in a mutually respectful way, the greatest chance we have for peace. These levees do not just protect the people who live in the neighborhoods around them. They protect billions and billions of dollars in investment made by this country over a long period of time. And a levee system failed. We have struggled to keep the levees up. We have spent a lot of money keeping them up. But we needed more help from the Federal Government. We could have been more efficient on our end as well. We could have taxed our people more. But it gets hard on all of those fronts. People want tax relief. They don't really want to face the expense of what we have to do. We are not always disciplined about the way we build. But again, it is not impossible if we make some decisions now to get some emergency money to our cities, to our sheriffs, to our law enforcement officers, and to our very basic health care in the region. This is not just New Orleans, this is all through south Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. This would cover all of them. Under current law, that is no help to them right now--or very little help. We can cover some places in Texas if they need help. I don't know if they need as much help as we do in Louisiana or as we do along the gulf coast in Mississippi which I am more familiar with than I am the coast of Texas, although of course I have been there. I really grew up on the coast of Mississippi, as well as on the coast of Louisiana, so I am more familiar with it. But I can tell you that these cities that look a lot like this throughout the gulf coast are going to have a hard time meeting payroll. Some cities have money in the bank, but the needs are so great and so overwhelming and FEMA has not been, as I said, very efficient. If we can't get them just a bridge loan, if you will, for 3 months a lot of our cities won't operate. Now, I understand--and this is a Mississippi coast. You can tell because they have white beaches. We don't have beaches. Our coastline is marshy. I am pretty sure this is Mississippi. In Mississippi, I understand their legislature has borrowed $500 million so their cities could get some money, and that might be a solution for them. The problem with Louisiana is that our Constitution prevents us from borrowing money for operating expenses. And that is, in my view as a former State treasurer and current Appropriations Committee member, not a bad rule, if you will. You don't want to borrow money for operating expenses. If you are going to borrow money and have people have to pay it back, you want to invest it in that which will return to you something in the future. So you borrow money to build ports, to build highways, for capital improvements. So our State cannot borrow money at the legislative level to give out to our cities for operating expenses or to our firefighters and police. The FEMA law today only allows the payment of overtime. So while we can get overtime paid, we can't get straight time paid. We can't get regular time paid. Even if we would, they can't lend them more than $5 million. And as I said, the operating budget in the city of New Orleans is $20 million a month, so $5 million will not do us very much good. If I thought we could organize a constitutional amendment in 30 days and have a vote, I might suggest that. But the polling places have been washed away, and I am not sure how we would find all of our people to vote since there are people in all 50 States, and we have no mechanism right now to do that, to my knowledge. So we cannot borrow money at the State level to help them. The cities can't go to the capital market. We are restricted by the Constitution. FEMA has $63 billion, with $43 billion sitting there, and Senator Vitter and I and our delegation have asked for $1 billion to keep the lifeline until we get back from our vacation, and we are told we can't afford it, but we are going to stay here and pass a bill to stand up the country of Iraq by building schools, health care facilities, electric grid, sewer and water, water treatment plants. Well, I can understand, you all can understand why the people of my State would want me to stand here and try to make this case. So we will be standing here, I will be standing here until 4:30 in the morning until we get a resolution on what we are asking for. I am asking for $1 billion of real money anyway, outside of FEMA or take the $1 billion from FEMA. Let us keep our lifeline going until we get back, and when we get back have a vote on Grassley-Baucus, which this Senate has put together in a bipartisan way, with three amendments for emergency funding for our schools and our universities, for health care, and housing. I reserve the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator from Alaska.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Chair.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, it has been a very long day. I am hoping, as this day continues into the evening hours, as we continue to work on the underlying bill, which is the Defense appropriations bill, to have an amendment dealing with Hurricane Katrina in a way this Congress might respond to this urgent need. I thank the Senator from Alaska for his patience through this day because the issue that is before us really is not an amendment on the Defense bill. It is a separate issue but needs to be handled before we leave, in my opinion. That is why I have stayed here throughout the day and have been here, of course, throughout the week, in many meetings and phone calls, and now in time on the floor throughout the day, to try to find a way to get some immediate help to our cities and parishes and counties along the gulf coast. It looks like there is a possibility that still might be the case. But because of the lateness of the hour, really for the staff that has been here so long, I am going to agree to continue to work through the night, allow the staff to take a recess, and spend some time on this, as I have throughout the last few hours, working with my colleagues, particularly Senator Levin from Michigan, who has put in a tremendous amount of time, other Senators, Senator Carper from Delaware, Senator Clinton, Senator Durbin, Senator Reid. And Senator Frist has been here for a while. Of course, Senator Vitter was here earlier trying to get through this process, with the specific focus of mine being to try to get our State in the same situation that other States have been put in when they needed help. We are not quite there yet, but we may yet get there by the time we close the debate in just a few hours. But, really, the staff has done more than they should be asked, to stay this late. We have tried four or five different compromises in the last 8 hours, and we are not quite there yet. But we may be there in the morning when the Senate comes out of recess. I am going to continue to work through the evening to see if we can find some sort of solution so that our four States--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas--can be treated in the same way with the same respect as other States have in disasters in the past. I thank the Senator for his patience throughout the evening.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, it has been a very long day. I am hoping, as this day continues into the evening hours, as we continue to work on the underlying bill, which is the Defense appropriations bill, to have an amendment dealing with Hurricane Katrina in a way this Congress might respond to this urgent need. I thank the Senator from Alaska for his patience through this day because the issue that is before us really is not an amendment on the Defense bill. It is a separate issue but needs to be handled before we leave, in my opinion. That is why I have stayed here throughout the day and have been here, of course, throughout the week, in many meetings and phone calls, and now in time on the floor throughout the day, to try to find a way to get some immediate help to our cities and parishes and counties along the gulf coast. It looks like there is a possibility that still might be the case. But because of the lateness of the hour, really for the staff that has been here so long, I am going to agree to continue to work through the night, allow the staff to take a recess, and spend some time on this, as I have throughout the last few hours, working with my colleagues, particularly Senator Levin from Michigan, who has put in a tremendous amount of time, other Senators, Senator Carper from Delaware, Senator Clinton, Senator Durbin, Senator Reid. And Senator Frist has been here for a while. Of course, Senator Vitter was here earlier trying to get through this process, with the specific focus of mine being to try to get our State in the same situation that other States have been put in when they needed help. We are not quite there yet, but we may yet get there by the time we close the debate in just a few hours. But, really, the staff has done more than they should be asked, to stay this late. We have tried four or five different compromises in the last 8 hours, and we are not quite there yet. But we may be there in the morning when the Senate comes out of recess. I am going to continue to work through the evening to see if we can find some sort of solution so that our four States--Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas--can be treated in the same way with the same respect as other States have in disasters in the past. I thank the Senator for his patience throughout the evening.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.