Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
June 14, 2006 -- Page: S5852

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished senior Senator from Virginia for allowing me to take this time to speak about the supplemental appropriations bill. I certainly want to start by saying that I think the authorization bill that is before us is a good bill that will authorize the spending for our troops in the field. I plan to speak separately on that later in the week.

Today, I want to talk about the supplemental appropriations bill that the Senate will pass at 10 o'clock tomorrow because this is a very important emergency supplemental. Obviously, the majority of this bill, $70.4 billion, is for our military. It is to make sure that we support our men and women in the very important mission that we have asked them to do. I cannot imagine sending our troops into harm's way and not assuring that they have the equipment they need to do the job. So we are doing that in this bill--$70.4 billion for uparmoring of vehicles, for more aircraft, and the Bradley fighting vehicle upgrades that they so desperately need.

I am going to take this opportunity to say what a tremendous achievement we have had this week with the death of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the head of the operation in Iraq that was behind the heinous crimes on the streets of Iraq day after day after day that we have been seeing. The man who was the mastermind of those atrocities is now gone. It is a significant victory for the intelligence capabilities of our country and our military personnel who achieved this remarkable feat. I hope this will begin another phase in the stabilization of Iraq.

Clearly we need to assure that our troops have what they need to do the job. Part of what is in this supplemental appropriations bill is money for training of Iraqi troops, because if we are going to stabilize Iraq, it is going to be with Iraqi security forces. That is what the Iraqis want, it is what we want, it is what our allies want, and it is certainly what the people of the world who believe in freedom want for the people of Iraq.

The other part of the bill is one that is very important to my home State of Texas, as well as to Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and the other States that have suffered so much from hurricanes last season. We have never seen the ravages of a hurricane like we saw after Katrina and then Rita following so closely after that.

This bill, for the first time, has begun to acknowledge the part that my home State of Texas played in this recovery effort. We had a situation we have never had before in the history of our country. The first hurricane, Hurricane Katrina, did not hit Texas, but Texas had a major part in the disaster recovery. That is because 500,000 people were moved from Louisiana to Texas almost overnight. It was the biggest migration from one State to another in our country's history.

It has been a costly endeavor for the people of Texas, one which they have stood up and handled with grace beyond any imagination. But it is time that we reimburse the people of Texas because some of our communities are having to increase taxes to carry the burden, and that is not right. It was a natural disaster for which Texans stepped up to the plate, because we are a neighboring State, to try to handle, and now we have suffered the consequences. This bill helps us in that recovery effort.

The first part that is so important for us is the equity in reimbursement rates for the communities hit by Hurricane Rita. Since Hurricane Rita hit in September of 2005, the counties on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River have been able to put up 10 percent, with a 90-percent Federal reimbursement. This has been very helpful to the people of Louisiana. But on the other side of the Sabine River, where the same hurricane hit, our counties have had to put up 25 percent of the cleanup. The result is that much debris has never been cleaned up.

Furthermore, we have infrastructure that has not even begun to be repaired. Some counties, in doing the original cleanup, contemplated bankruptcy. They have talked now about having to raise the property tax rates to pay for the cleanup, and some have borrowed money and issued bonds to try to do the cleanup.

Bond issues should never be used for that kind of an emergency or any kind of operational expenditure. Bonds are for capital expenditures. They knew that it was not good public policy, but they had no alternative because these are counties which are rural, not rich in property values, and it was a huge strain.

In this bill, those 22 counties in East Texas will get the reimbursement rate that has been given on the Louisiana side. I am so grateful to the Senate for doing this in a way that does allow equity for the first time since last September. This has been such a relief to these counties. I have had calls from mayors and county judges who were almost giving up hope because they did not know how they would manage this crisis, and now they see light at the end of the tunnel.

I thank my colleagues for supporting this bill. I know the bill will pass. I particularly thank Senator Cochran, Senator Byrd, Senator Gregg, Senator Collins, Senator Specter, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Kennedy. It was these Senators who helped us get through the equity in reimbursement that will so help our East Texas counties.

The other part of this hurricane relief bill is in the educational area. When we had half a million evacuees, we were looking at, of course, educating their children. After an initial enrollment of 43,000 children, mostly in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, some in the East Texas counties that also were hit by Rita, we did agree in a previous supplemental to reimburse these school districts. We authorized impact aid of $6,000 per student to cover the cost of education for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. However, they were only able to do the reimbursement at a rate of $4,000. So these school districts were taking a hit of $2,000 per student. The current supplemental bridges that gap, which is a huge help for these communities.

Just to give one an idea of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Texas, it is normal to see a two-page ad in a newspaper that advertises polling locations for elections. One would see in any normal election in a county all of the polling places on election day. This newspaper I am holding up doesn't seem to look that unusual. It is a list of polling places for the New Orleans mayor's race. What is interesting is this is the Houston Chronicle. This same ad over two pages appeared in the Dallas Morning News. That is because the number of Katrina evacuees who were going to vote and did vote in the New Orleans mayor's race was significant enough, with a 500,000-person migration after that hurricane, to make a huge difference.

There is also a picture on the front page of the Houston Chronicle just before that mayor's race with a billboard for New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin.

We can tell just from these anecdotal pieces of evidence that this is an evacuation which is affecting Texas to a huge extent.

The $235 million in this bill will help these school districts make up for the deficit they have been funding all year and, again, raising property taxes in Texas to pay for it will not now be necessary.

We are going to monitor the enrollment of the number of schoolchildren in these school districts this fall to see if we have large numbers of displaced schoolchildren--because schools are not yet fully open in New Orleans--and we will come back and ask for more supplemental funds for the Katrina evacuees who are not planning to make a permanent home in Texas but are still in our education system.

Because of the fairness of the conference committee--and I particularly mention Congressman Kevin Brady, Congressman Ted Poe, Congressman Hal Rogers, and Congressman Henry Bonilla for helping us put forward the case that needed to be made for Texas to show that we had to have some equity in the East Texas counties that were hit by Rita, as well as the educational community that was so affected by the evacuees who came to our State immediately after Katrina. This is going to go a long way toward helping them.

We are also hoping to have some of the money for infrastructure reimbursement after Hurricane Rita that is also included in this bill, but it is at the discretion of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

This is a balanced bill. It is the first time we have been able to recognize that though a State wasn't hit by the first natural disaster, it nevertheless had a huge impact on the economy of the State. Our State stepped up to the plate, and this bill begins to equalize the burden our State has carried.

I appreciate my colleagues listening to me. I appreciate their help in the original Senate bill. I appreciate the members of the conference committee who did so much to help, and I certainly appreciate the chairman, Senator Cochran, Senator Byrd, Senator Gregg, Senator Collins, Senator Specter, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Kennedy for helping us create the equity that will exist when this conference report is agreed to tomorrow.