Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is right.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And the gentleman is absolutely right, we are here to say it right out loud. I also voted against the partisan committee that was voted on last week. And something else we should address out loud are the ludicrous comparisons that have been made to other so-called partisan or internal congressional investigations. They are comparing the Katrina committee that was formed in the Congress last week to the Iran-Contra investigation. Well, there is absolutely no comparison. The Iran-Contra investigation was by a Democratic Congress versus a Republican administration, where clearly there would not be the legislative branch and the executive branch walking in lockstep. Clearly there was the accountability there when you have two different party leaderships running those two different branches of government. So that is a ludicrous comparison and makes absolutely no sense to use it, and it is disingenuous to use it. And to add insult to injury, and I also hope we spend some time talking about this, what the leadership in the Congress is talking about, as if it is not bad enough we are not going to really get to the bottom of why there was a serious lapse in emergency preparedness and disaster response in the gulf coast States, now, during the rebuilding effort, when we have all said and all Americans have locked elbows and said we will rebuild the gulf coast region and we will do everything we can to help them, and we absolutely should, what are they talking about here in the Congress? They are talking about massive spending cuts, including cutting the prescription drug benefit for our senior citizens in Medicare; eliminating it, repealing it, or delaying its implementation as an offset to paying for the reconstruction of the gulf coast States.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Go right ahead.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let us roll back a piece of it.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have a name for it. They are calling it Operation Offset. This is their plan. They are going to come back here in a few days and propose Operation Offset, which is going to say that we are not touching the tax cuts. In fact, I will quote. I believe it is the chairman of the Republican study group, our colleague from Indiana. He said, we need to rebuild. We can find the cuts in Washington, D.C. to do that, I really believe that. And his proposal is to set aside all those additional highway projects and delay the drug benefit by a year. Those are just some of the proposals that are expected to come down the pike. Now, before I yield to the gentleman from Florida, I represent a district that is not poverty stricken. There are poverty stricken sections, but there are communities in my district that are quite wealthy. And I have people in those communities stopping me in the supermarket and saying, Debbie, keep my tax cut. These are people that need help. We need to make sure they can have health care and that they have a roof over their head. So there are people out there that benefit from these tax cuts that get it, so why do they not get it here?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Please explain prevailing wage.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, to stay on Davis-Bacon for a second, there was also some irony in the President's waiver because last year when it was 2004 and we were in advance of a Presidential election, he took great pains at expressing his deep affection for Florida and Floridians, talked about how important a State we were and made many trips to our State. Interestingly enough, he waived the Davis-Bacon requirements for Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe County in this last go-round with Katrina.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There were four storms last year that came through Florida. Not one of them did he do that. And after Katrina, in a year that is not an election year, he waives the prevailing wage requirements in Davis-Bacon in three counties. Yet FEMA, his administration, has refused to reimburse and grant individual assistance reimbursement for people who had their homes damaged, looking through their roof at the sky that were victims in Florida of Hurricane Katrina. If they are not going to reimburse people and they are going to have to rebuild themselves or be left out in the cold and not rebuild at all, then what is the burning need to waive Davis-Bacon and the prevailing wage requirements in those counties? I guess only to help contractors, only to ensure that whatever building is going on is going to put as much money in the pocket of a contractor and workers be dammed because they really do not matter anyway because it is not an election year. I mean, the way that we can ensure that we prevent this fraud and abuse in contracting is stop the sweetheart deals, stop the monopoly contracts, make sure that we have some bidding and responsible bidding so that we know that the contractors that can actually do the work for a responsible amount of money are the ones that get the contract. We have a funeral and cemetery company that got a contract, a no-bid contract, in Louisiana to bury and, I guess, deal with the bodies, and there are so many of them; and this is the same company that was prosecuted for throwing bodies into the forest of a cemetery in West Palm Beach, Florida. Prosecuted. Buried people in the same grave, moved bodies from one grave to another. This is the kind of track record this company has, and now they have been given a sole-source contract in Louisiana. I mean is it not time that we stop the madness in giveaways that this administration has been in lockstep involvement in trying to help corporations as opposed to real people since the day that they walked into the White House? I mean, our legislation that was introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) today would do several extremely important things. One is it would establish an independent commission to prevent fraud and abuse. I mean, that is essential. We have to have some reviews of the process. We have to review contract awards to ensure that the Federal Government is complying with the competition requirements that there are. I mean, the implication of potential payoffs is just rampant without that type of review. We have to review whether contract awards are based on merit as opposed to relationships between awardees and Federal Government officials. I do not know if it is any coincidence, but the Vice President is the former CEO of Halliburton; and I would love to see how many contracts Halliburton has gotten. I am sure there is no coincidence there. Nothing granted to Halliburton based on relationship with the administration. Right? Could not possibly be. Review in realtime the spending that is going on under ongoing Federal contracts to determine whether it is wasteful, whether they are actually doing the job that we contracted with them to do. In Florida there is a huge review going on over the private contracting that the government has been involved in because in almost every instance none of the private contractors are meeting their obligations. They are not meeting their accountability standards. Money is going out the door. At the Federal level, we deal in the billions. Billions. People do not have any concept. It is hard to get our mind around that much money. If we do not adopt an independent commission and start injecting, insisting, on some accountability, then it is mindboggling how much waste we are going to let go out the door.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, as we have the last few minutes here, let us just recap what is not happening that should be happening. The American people clearly have indicated that they want an independent commission. They want a commission that is going to truly investigate what happened so that it never happens again. Instead, they get a partisan committee created in Congress with an imbalance of Republicans to Democrats and Congress investigating itself. What are they getting? Instead of a bipartisan effort to truly rebuild the Gulf States, they are getting proposals to cut prescription drugs for senior citizens, transportation projects for people that are in dire need of being able to use that transportation and unclog the arteries of America, billions of dollars in proposed cuts in higher education, in college aid in the budget; only a couple of weeks delay in the reconciliation process, our budget reconciliation process which is also a round of cuts; a response from the Republican leadership here that the answer to their ballooning the deficit is to cut into the hearts of the people that need it the most. Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, what we are proposing is an independent commission. We are proposing a review, a thorough review of the contracting process to make sure that there is some accountability in the way we spend these dollars. We are proposing housing and economic security and education assistance for the Katrina victims that need it the most. And I have to conclude by saying that we also have proposed passing legislation to ensure that all victims of Hurricane Katrina, including those in our home State of Florida, get reimbursement for the damage that they received, because they certainly are not getting that help right now.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, first of all, to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the gentleman from California (Chairman Thomas) and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. McCrery). It is because of their flexibility and sensitivity that the residents of Florida who suffered damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina are one step closer to getting emergency tax relief for those affected by the hurricane. Today, we provided emergency tax relief for Floridians affected by Hurricane Katrina as well as for those affected in our neighboring States to our west. I am so pleased to have been able to come together with my Florida colleagues, Messrs. Foley, Diaz-Balart, and Shaw to make this possible. As a Member of Congress that represents South Florida, I can empathize with the victims of Hurricane Katrina because my home, South Florida, has been struck by numerous hurricanes and is threatened by them every year. The scenes of the destruction throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have reminded South Floridians of the devastation of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane which struck South Florida 13 years ago. The pain of those who lost loved ones, their homes, their pets, and who now find themselves in temporary housing, thousands of miles from home, their pain is palpable and every Floridian's heart goes out to them. However, I rise tonight to call the Nation's attention to something that I think has been overlooked, understandably, by the Nation, and that is the plight of those residents in Florida who suffered damage because of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina's first victim was Florida as it struck the Broward and Miami-Dade counties as a Category 1 storm on August 25, leaving hundreds of damaged or destroyed homes in its wake. Many of the farmers and agricultural workers that grow and tend these crops that were damaged will be out of jobs or will lose significant income this year as a result of this storm. Craig Fugate, Florida's emergency management chief, told FEMA officials last week that the State expects the loss of over 2,000 farm- related jobs in Miami-Dade County alone. Okra, malanga, sweet potato and cassava crops have been destroyed, he said, resulting in about a $492 million loss. That is why it came as a surprise to many homeowners in Florida when FEMA announced that it would not be providing individual assistance to residents of Florida who suffered damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina. I want to make it very clear what the effect of this decision means to the residents of South Florida who suffered damage in Hurricane Katrina. This year, this is what FEMA will not pay for after Hurricane Katrina struck Florida. This woman here, who has had the roof ripped off her house and most of her possessions water damaged: FEMA's response to her, You are on your own, good luck. How about this family here? This woman is standing in water up to her knees. Her cars are halfway submerged. These are not fancy cars. These are later model, 10-year-old cars. What was FEMA's response to her family's request for assistance? The same as it was to the people in New Orleans during the first days following Hurricane Katrina's aftermath when it hit the Gulf States: You are on your own. My question to FEMA is this: Storms do not know State boundaries, so why does FEMA? FEMA has set an arbitrary and discretionary threshold of 800 homes that have been destroyed or badly damaged as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Let me reiterate this is a purely discretionary number. Title 44 in the Code of Federal Regulations states, ``There is no set threshold for recommending individual assistance.'' It is estimated that more than half of the residents who need assistance with storm recovery in Broward and Miami-Dade counties live on less than $20,000 a year. Yet FEMA denied Federal aid to those who qualified. Most of the mobile home residents in Broward impacted by Katrina are primarily uninsured or underinsured. My State has been hit by six hurricanes over the past year and a half. This is a constant plague that the residents of Florida deal with, and the denial of aid to those in need is irresponsible and unconscionable. I introduced legislation last week that calls on FEMA to provide the much-needed assistance to the residents of Florida who are victims of Hurricane Katrina. I plead with my colleagues, as we did today with the Katrina Tax Relief bill, let us make sure we do not turn our backs on the first victims of Hurricane Katrina and give help to those in need, regardless of State line.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, today I offer an amendment to provide guidelines and incentives for States to civilly confine violent sexual predators. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) and his staff for this support in working with my office on this provision. I would also like to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for his support as well. Most criminals deemed as sexually violent have broken State, as opposed to Federal, laws. This amendment would incentivize States to implement civil confinement programs. This is not a new or radical idea. As of 2002, 16 States and the District of Columbia have implemented some form of a civil confinement law. Under this amendment, civil confinement would encompass those who admit their illness, as well as those who are deemed too dangerous to return to society without proper treatment and rehabilitation. Texas prisoner Larry Don McQuay is an example of the kind of person who would merit civil confinement. He is a convicted child molester who describes himself alternatively as scum of the Earth and a monster. He is currently serving a 20-year sentence for molesting three children.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with my colleague once again and an honor to serve with him. I just have to commend the gentleman. I saw him when I was watching my TV coming off the plane yesterday, the gentleman's trip to tour the devastated areas and, particularly Hancock County, which I think the gentleman particularly went to with his Committee on Homeland Security colleagues to highlight that it was not just New Orleans, it was not just the ground zero area of New Orleans. Ground Zero was actually Hancock County, and the communities there that essentially, it appears, have been forgotten, or at least neglected because they are smaller and the focus does not appear to be on them. So I was so proud of the gentleman to see him doing that. Once again, the gentleman is stepping up for people who need him. This is not, we are not here for a love fest; but it did my heart some good to know that colleagues of mine were going where their help was needed.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman is absolutely right on point. Your comments remind me of a question that our good friend, Doug Lyons from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, who I spoke to this morning, asked me. He said, he asked me if Michael Brown's resignation was enough. He said, now that we have got a successful, documented professional who will be at least, on an interim basis, running FEMA and making sure that the disaster response to Katrina has an expert in charge, is that enough? You know, can we all breathe a sigh of relief, wipe our hands and go home? I mean, the answer to that is just so absolutely not. The leader of FEMA is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, when you ask any expert in emergency preparedness and disaster response if the one leader is the most important chink in the armor, they would of course say, no, it requires planning and preparation and budgeting and foresight and hindsight and a whole combination of expertise and planning that goes into preparedness and response. So while it certainly was the right thing to do, and we are pleased to see that former Under Secretary Brown now did the right thing and stepped aside, there is so much left to be done. And going forward, while we can talk about what went wrong, we need an independent investigation and an independent commission that will be able to examine objectively so the American people have their confidence restored and that we know we have some competence and some deliberations going on about how we are going to deal with these kind of disasters in the future. We have got to talk about what comes next. You watch the news every night, and now almost all the TV stations are allowing Katrina victims to list their cell phone numbers on national television because some of them are still looking for their kids. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, at least as of yesterday, said there were still 1,700 missing children reported from Katrina's aftermath: 1,700 children, 14 year olds, 12 year olds, 6 year olds, babies. There are babies that are still separated from their parents, from their moms. We have got to do something going forward for these Katrina victims. We have got to make sure they have housing. We have got to make sure we get these kids back in school and we can get them back in school near or in the area that they originally lived in. And like the gentleman said, with the President's waiver of Davis-Bacon, which is the law that requires the prevailing wage be paid to workers, what incentive is there going to be for them to come back? When you have the State of Israel, which commendably has offered scholarships for the college students that were displaced by Katrina, and we have Katrina victims going over, Jews and non-Jews going over to Israel now to accept scholarships, and the generosity of other countries, boy, does that say a lot about what we need to do to step up and make these residents whole again. We have got to ensure that a number of different things happen. This is the 30-something Working Group. We have got a generation of people and young kids and our generation's children that are going to be in dire need of their government's assistance. And if there is any time when it is imperative that the Federal Government engage, any point with any circumstance that there is an appropriate and vital role for the Federal Government, it is in response to a hurricane. I am glad to see that the President today acknowledged finally, because it is really the first time I have heard him acknowledge, the possibility of a mistake. I am glad to see that he owned up at least in part to the possibility of there being problems, and it will be interesting to see what he says Thursday night when he speaks to the American people. I hope what he says, we hope what he says is that there is going to be some drastic changes in our preparedness, in our response, in our funding, and in our priorities, because right now we are moving in the wrong direction.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if you do not mind if I jump in, I want to just caution people listening tonight, our colleagues, our leadership, because when you have a disaster or anything of the proportion in size that Katrina was, it is hard to get your mind around it, especially if you have not been there. You now have direct, first- person ability to relay and understand the depth of what happened. Most of us have only seen the aftermath on TV. The danger that we have in front of us is that with every passing day that Katrina's hitting is behind us, we are in danger of the American public and us as leaders becoming desensitized. The more it is on the news, the more we hear about it, the more we read about it, it is just the human psyche is such that you cannot have that raw nerve scratched every day and not steel yourself against it. With that desensitization, we are in danger of not having an appropriate response come out of this body, and we have got to come together. We come here every week and we stand up and we point out our very clear differences with our friends on the other side of the aisle, but it does not have to be this way with the response to Katrina. There are some specific action items that can and should be done in order to prevent ourselves from becoming desensitized, not just as policy-makers but in the general populace as well. We need the press. We should commend the press from the floor of this body for the spotlight that they have shown on these victims and their reality because, quite honestly, without that spotlight being shown by them, without their piling into the storm-ravaged area, see no evil, hear no evil, they would still be saying the same thing, and we would not have had the response and reaction that, quite frankly, we should have had right from the beginning. So I want to commend the press and encourage them to continue to do it, but we have some action items that need to occur. We need to get these people health care. We need to make sure they have access to Medicaid immediately. We need to get them food stamp access. We need to make sure that they have access to education and housing and not just far-flung housing all over the country. If you lived in New Orleans, you do not need to resettle yourself permanently in Utah. That is not what we want to have a policy direct these people to. We want to bring them back. We want to set up transitional and then temporary housing and then eventually get them into permanent facilities, whether it is facilities that they have assistance from the Federal Government or whether they be given the ability to help them to make their own purchases of homes, which would be a wonderful thing to see. That is what the leadership in this Congress is going to need to make happen. It is certainly going to be suggested by our side of the aisle. We need to make sure that we come together and suggest it on both sides of the aisle. The reconciliation process should be suspended. There are a number of things that should happen, and we are going to continue to talk about that.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is right. As we discussed last week when we were putting this bill together, and we are fortunate that we have all 25 members of the Florida delegation as cosponsors, we are working together on this, this is not a partisan issue. We have some homeowners who were looking through the roof of their houses at the sky. The impact on those families in Florida is the same as the impact, without the widespread devastation, that they are feeling in the Gulf Coast States. But we wanted to make sure that Floridians do not get left behind who are suffering in the same way. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership and advice and guidance on helping to put that bill together. One of the things that I wanted to talk about tonight is where we go from here, which is, I know, the direction that the gentleman from Florida is taking this discussion. There are some good things that have happened, in no small part, I think, due to the things that we have been pointing out over the last 10 or so days. Leader Pelosi has rightly called for an independent commission similar to the 9/11 Commission. Like the gentleman said, that would not be Members of Congress sitting around and talking to each other; that it would be, and certainly that would be bipartisan and would be balanced and fair, so the American people can have confidence in our emergency preparedness and disaster response system. Because of all of this that has happened in the last 2 weeks, that is what has been shaken the most. We have been building, since September 11 we have been trying to rebuild Americans' confidence in the system, because when you have the Twin Towers knocked down, that was the biggest devastation beyond, obviously, the tragedy of the 3,000 people who died there, was that America's confidence was shaken in our ability to respond to those kinds of disasters. And it is 4 years in the making, a process that we restore confidence, we restore people's ability to believe that we have some security here. While we may have made improvements on the terrorist and international risk preparedness level, clearly the domestic preparedness level, as the President admitted today, we have a lot of work to do. Because we never can predict Mother Nature, and particularly because of where we live, we have hurricanes approaching our constituents on a regular basis, it is really disturbing. So I am glad that Under Secretary Brown did the right thing and stepped down. We called for it a year ago with our colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler); and, quite honestly, had he done the right thing sooner than that, then perhaps we could have had a prepared expert in place who could have responded much better to the results of Katrina.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation with all 25 Members from the State of Florida that would assist residents of Florida who were victims of Hurricane Katrina. But before I do, I would like to say that I am proud to have supported the two emergency relief supplemental that we have passed for victims of the hurricane in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion. The pain of those who have lost loved ones, their homes, their pets and now find themselves in temporary housing thousands of miles from home, their pain is palpable. As a Member of Congress who represents south Florida, I can empathize with the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the gulf States because my home, south Florida, has been struck by numerous hurricanes and is threatened by them every year. Even now we have Hurricane Ophelia, which at 5 o'clock was declared a hurricane approaching the coast. The scenes of the destruction throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi have reminded south Floridians of the devastation of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane which struck south Florida 13 years ago. However, I rise tonight to call the Nation's attention to something that I think has been overlooked, understandably, by the Nation, and that is the plight of those residents in Florida who suffered damage because of Hurricane Katrina. I want to remind people that Hurricane Katrina first made landfall in Florida, striking Broward and Miami-Dade counties in the heart of my congressional district. When it first hit Florida, Hurricane Katrina was not a large storm. In fact, when it made landfall in Florida, it was only a Category 1 hurricane which moved quickly over the State and moved out into the gulf before building strength and causing the devastation that has transfixed our Nation for the last 10 days. While only a Category 1 hurricane at the time, the damage caused by Katrina in south Florida was extensive for many people. In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, more than 350 homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports today that Craig Fugate, Florida's emergency management chief, told FEMA officials this week that the State expects the loss of over 2,000 farm-related jobs in Miami-Dade County alone. Okra, malanga, sweet potato, and cassava crops have been destroyed, he said, resulting in about a $492 million loss. In addition, State agriculture officials say avocado and tropical fruit crops were severely affected. Many of the farmers and agricultural workers that grow and tend these crops will be out of jobs or will lose significant income this year as a result of this storm. On Saturday, August 27, the front page of The Washington Post and many other media outlets throughout the country showed pictures of the flooding and damage in south Florida resulting from Hurricane Katrina. That is why it came as a surprise to many homeowners when last week FEMA announced that they would not be providing individual assistance to residents of Florida who suffered damage or destruction as a result of Hurricane Katrina. I want to make it very clear to you, Madam Speaker, what the effect of this decision means to the residents of south Florida who suffered damage from the hurricane. This here, this, is what FEMA refuses to pay for when Hurricane Katrina struck Florida. This woman here, who has had the roof ripped off her house and most of her possessions water damaged, FEMA's response to her is, you are on your own. Good luck. And how about this family here. This woman is standing in water that is above her knees. The water is inside her house and has damaged her cars. Her house is not a fancy beach house. It is an average American's house. Her car is a later model and clearly more than 10 years old. What was FEMA's response to her family's request for help? The same as it was to the people in New Orleans who were dying in the first days after Katrina struck: you are on your own. My question to FEMA is this: Storms do not know State boundaries, so why does FEMA? Looking at this picture here of the woman standing in her destroyed home, I am reminded of a woman that I met last week when touring hurricane damage in my own congressional district. I was touring the damage at the Park City Estates mobile home community in Davie, when I met Dorothy Rothbauer, an 86-year-old resident whose mobile home was damaged in Hurricane Katrina. Ms. Rothbauer's home is roughly 20 miles from the beach. Her mobile home is nice. It is not extravagant. It is cozy and it has been her home for 25 years. Ms. Rothbauer is not a woman who lives beyond her means. She lives modestly and saves her money and has gotten by all of these years. But now she needs help. She needs her government's help. As she showed me the damage to her house, she began to cry. It was excruciating. Pieces of the exterior have fallen off. Water has leaked in and the extent of structural damage is unknown. She looked into my eyes, knowing that FEMA had told her that they could not offer her assistance, and crying, asked me what she was supposed to do now. As I visited the other homes in the neighborhood, I realized that Dorothy's house did not have even as extensive damage as the others. Across the street and down the block, roofs were entirely ripped off of these houses. Dorothy's neighborhood is just one of many communities affected by Hurricane Katrina throughout Broward and Miami-Dade counties. And FEMA's answer to why they are not offering individual assistance to us in Florida is that for this storm FEMA has decided there is a State threshold of 800 homes that need to be damaged in Florida. My State of Florida has been hit by six hurricanes, six in the past 2 years. Denying the people of Florida Federal assistance to rebuild their homes is wrong, and I urge my colleagues in the House to join the 25 Members from Florida in ensuring that FEMA will reimburse them for their damage. The Census Bureau reports that in 2004, the percentage of people living in the Miami/FL area in poverty was 17 percent. The Federal poverty level is, just $12,334 for a family of two and only $19,307 for a family of four. Denying the people of this area Federal aid in rebuilding their lives is unconscionable. It is for this reason, Mr. Speaker, that today I am proud to introduce legislation that is co-sponsored by every member of Florida's House of Representatives delegation. All twenty-five Republicans and Democrats. My legislation would direct FEMA to cover valid claims for individual assistance resulting from Hurricane Katrina's impact on the State of Florida. This legislation does not ask for something unusual, it only asks to right the wrong done to the people of Florida and it allows us as a Nation to answer the tear-filled question of what am I supposed to do now, posed to me by Dorothy Rothbauer last week. I urge my colleagues to co-sponsor my legislation that would extend relief to the Florida victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. It is again great to be here with my colleagues from Florida and Ohio. It is so important that we spend the time that we spend here each week helping to get the message out to our generation and, quite honestly, to the generations ahead of us and behind us. We had a devastating tragedy happen to us in our country, and that is to all of us, about 10 days ago. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I literally live at one point or another through every storm in the ``cone of error,'' as every storm that approaches the United States at some point or another, the gentleman's and my home and the homes of our constituents are in the cone of error for some period of time. So we know what it is like to stare down any one of a number of different levels of hurricanes or tropical storms. As we speak tonight, we have Ophelia just about 100 miles off the coast of our State, yet again another tropical storm warning. We are up to ``O'' now. It is just never-ending. One of the things that I would like to spend some time on tonight with both of your indulgence is we do need to get the information out, and one of the things that I did on Tuesday at home in south Florida was help to try to channel the energy of south Floridians who obviously were devastated by the last Category 5 hurricane that hit the United States and that unfortunately hit us in south Florida, deep in the hearts of our community, and we had an outpouring of affection and assistance from across the world. So you can imagine listening to this, what people in south Florida so badly want to do is return the favor and give back to the people in the gulf States and across the country what was given to them 13 years ago. They do not know where to channel that energy, because there are so many relief organizations, so many on-the-spot relief organizations that have cropped up in the last week; and, unfortunately, if you recall during Andrew and during the 9/11 attacks, you have groups that will form within a matter of days to take advantage of a whole lot of money that is flowing through people's hands. So what we did in south Florida is we channeled people's energy through one organization, Volunteer Florida, which is an organization affiliated with the State that exists throughout the year to help foster volunteerism. But we turned it into the clearinghouse for our State and gave people a phone number that they can call. I will check my notes and provide it. I do not want to give out the wrong number. Logon to www.volunteerflorida.org. We are trying to make sure that people go through an agency they know they can have confidence in. Beyond that, there is an absolute necessity, I feel, for us to talk about what has gone on in the last 6 or 7 days, or, rather, what did not go on, because it is just absolutely unacceptable to me, and unacceptable is not a strong enough word. The response, the lack of response, the indifference, the insensitivity and the actions and words of the leadership that is running this country in response to this devastating tragedy is just inexcusable to me. While I have heard many of my colleagues and other people across this country say now is not the time for finger pointing, well, do you know what? If we did not talk about what was not going on last week, then, quite honestly, I think President Bush might still be on vacation even today. I think quite honestly that perhaps there would not have been a response even to the degree that we needed it without someone saying that the emperor had no clothes. Where was the help? We know, because we live in the cone of error, so often in south Florida that you have several days' notice, and they did have several days notice that a Category 5 hurricane was bearing down on the gulf coast States. Where were the troops on the border of the cone of error? Where was the readiness? Where was the preparation? Where was the response? Where was the organization? It was nowhere. We have got to make sure not only that it never happens again, but that there is an investigation and that there is a discussion in this body as to why it happened. We should talk about FEMA and why it is being led by a person who has absolutely no previous emergency preparedness or disaster experience, none, why his ineptitude was allowed to continue. Why a year ago when Florida faced four hurricanes, FEMA was handing relief checks out like candy to people who were not even victims of the storms. There has got to be some accountability, and the time is not 2 months from now. We have billions of dollars that we are appropriating here and are about to appropriate that we should be appropriating, but we are going to go put it in the hands of people who have proven that they are incapable of handling disasters like this? Something needs to happen so that we can hold these people accountable on many different levels.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I want to just highlight that this is not an isolated incident. It would be easy to say that FEMA was just overwhelmed and could not possibly have been expected to be prepared for a storm the size of Katrina since this administration changed the rules of the game when it comes to FEMA. FEMA used to be an independent agency prior to the Bush administration and prior to its being absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. FEMA was an independent agency with a director and a staff that had expertise in disaster preparedness. I want to just highlight for my colleagues prior to Hurricane Katrina some of the instances of irresponsibility on FEMA's part under Secretary Brown's leadership. In 2004 Florida officials recorded 123 fatalities from last year's hurricanes. We had four hurricanes that hit Florida last year. FEMA pays expenses for 315 deaths; 123 fatalities documented from last year's storms. FEMA pays expenses for 315 deaths. There is something wrong with that. In 2004 FEMA reimbursed over 5,000 people $9.3 million for rental assistance when a follow-up study showed that most residents never left their homes. In 2004 FEMA reimbursed people for 11-piece bedroom sets when they just owned a bed. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina strikes Florida damaging over 200 homes. FEMA has declined to pay individual assistance to those homeowners. And I stood in the yard of an 86-year-old woman on Monday who lives in my district who was in tears, whose hearing was so poor she could barely hear what I was saying to her. Her home had no roof. Her neighbor's home across the street was basically crumpled in his yard, and around the corner was the same type of home with the roof ripped off and lying on the front lawn. FEMA has decided that there is an 800- home standard for destruction or damage before they will pay individual homeowners reimbursement for their damage. Let me just show my colleagues the type of damage that FEMA says people are not eligible for assistance. This is what FEMA will not pay for. After Hurricane Katrina, as a Category 1 storm, struck Florida last week, this is the damage that they say these people do not deserve reimbursement for because we did not have 800 homes suffer this kind of damage.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. FEMA is saying that the standard they are using in 2005, and as I have outlined for my colleagues, which they had no such standard in 2004, coincidentally in a Presidential year, they are saying that because Florida did not reach the threshold of 800 homes that were damaged that our homeowners who have damage are not eligible for individual assistance, meaning they cannot get reimbursed by the government, by FEMA, for the damage. Now, I will not claim by any stretch of the imagination that Floridians suffered the same type of strife and damage that people in the gulf States did from Katrina, but I will argue that hurricanes know no boundaries. Hurricanes do not respect State boundaries. Katrina did not know the border of Florida and Alabama and on westward. The impact on a homeowner in Florida is the same as it is on the homeowner who suffered the same kind of damage in a gulf State. This is what FEMA is denying. It is disgusting. And it is just not going to stop. We have got to get the word out to people, Mr. Speaker, that there are places that they can turn to for help, but clearly FEMA was not one of them.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, to piggyback on what the gentleman from Florida said about tax cuts, I mean it is just mind- boggling that yet again, their answer, their solution for everything is more tax cuts. I mean, I would not believe it unless I had it in print in front of me, but Treasury Secretary Snow said just the other day, today is September 7, he said yesterday at a press statement, this is in response to what we should do about Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. He said, ``Making the tax cuts permanent would be a real plus in a situation like this, because people would know they had going forward the advantage of lower tax rates,'' Snow said. ``And when people know they have lower tax rates locked in going forward, it affects their behaviors. It makes them more confident of the future.'' Now, let us talk more about FEMA's failure, because that is really what it boils down to at the end of the day, because we need FEMA to be there, we need FEMA to generate confidence in Americans. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans, and I am going to use the word ``Republican,'' but the Republicans ran last year on being the party that would be the best choice to protect people. They were the security party. That is supposedly the thing that tipped the scales. Well, it is not just an issue of security in a terrorist crisis, which all of this resulting from Hurricane Katrina calls into question now, about whether they really are the party. They are clearly not the party of crisis.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have proved they would not be able to be there in a disaster, in a disaster of any major proportion. Let me just detail, because I have another chart here that is going to outline a couple of things that I think are important, FEMA's failures. Let us talk about cleanup, and let me just acknowledge that ``personnel'' is spelled wrong on this chart. I want to make sure the people knew that I know how to spell ``personnel.'' Cleanup: FEMA has failed for pay for debris removal from private property. This has resulted in many homeowners incurring large expenses paying for the removal of not only their own fallen trees and other damage, but also rubble blown onto their lots from other locales. Let us talk about Federal aid. So we give them an ``F'' in cleanup, because they are basically ignoring Florida as if a storm never hit our State. FEMA must be more responsible in allocating Federal aid. We are talking about the things that FEMA should have been doing already and must do going forward. About $30.8 million in FEMA money has been awarded to residents in Miami-Dade, a county that I represent and that Congressman Meek lives in, much of it for replacement of appliances such as televisions and air conditioners, although the storms last year in Florida barely grazed the county. Meanwhile, this year, when the storm hit the county directly, now they are not reimbursing people who have legitimate damage and roofs ripped off their houses. Meanwhile, other storm-ravaged areas still have many families who continue to be displaced because of the severe damage to their homes. So they get an ``F'' in Federal aid. How about personnel? Subsequent reports detailed how FEMA inspectors received little training, that FEMA approved millions in assistance to other areas of the country largely unaffected by disasters; that government scientists said that FEMA misrepresented wind data that it used to justify the payments in Miami-Dade County last year, and that the agency paid 315 hurricane-related funeral claims in Florida, even though the official death toll was only 123. So they get an ``F'' in personnel. Fourth, the shocking statistics in terms of their preparedness. Florida officially recorded 123 fatalities last year from hurricanes, as I outlined, but were paid for 315 deaths, including those of a man who shot himself and a stroke victim who was hospitalized more than a week before the last storm hit, and that was documented by the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. In one case, a FEMA worker tried unsuccessfully to persuade a coroner to count among the hurricane casualties a morbidly obese heart attack patient who purportedly was scared to death. This is the kind of thing that went on in FEMA before Katrina. These are the people that we are putting our confidence in and that people in the gulf coast States are having to put their confidence in, who are going to come in and rescue them and clean up this mess. Most recently, disaster aid earmarked for hurricane victims in central Florida paid for funerals for people who died of cancer, a brain aneurysm and, in one case, advanced AIDS, according to the local medical examiner. That was in the Sun Sentinel as well. Asked to comment on payouts in central Florida, FEMA spokesman James McIntyre did not provide a response. He also did not address how many more funerals FEMA has paid for since that time. We have to make sure that FEMA takes responsibility and is held accountable for its mishaps. This is an organization that gets an ``F'' in every single thing that they are primarily responsible for. This is the organization that Americans are supposed to be putting their confidence in, that is going to be there for them when disaster strikes, and in advance of disasters striking that they should be ready for, and afterwards when they have to come in and clean it up. It is just absolutely inexcusable and disgusting. For example, with the President, responding to the damage that the gentleman talked about to the levees, he said on Good Morning, America last Tuesday, that no one expected the levees to fail. Yet, he cut the budget that would have shored up those levees just last June, in 2004.