Members of Louisiana Congressional Delegation Hold News Conference on Hurricane Katrina Recovery Sept. 15, 2005
|
|
Partial Text - complete transcript not yet available
List of Speakers
SEN. MARY L. LANDRIEU (D-LA.)
SEN. DAVID VITTER (R-LA.)
REP. RICHARD H. BAKER (R-LA.)
REP. CHARLES BOUSTANY JR. (R-LA.)
REP. JIM MCCRERY (R-LA.)
REP. WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON (D-LA.)
REP. RODNEY ALEXANDER (R-LA.)
I'm going to ask that all the members of the delegation present come on up and let's get started. We know that not everyone is present yet, but I fully expect by the time members conclude their remarks, the remainder of the delegation will come through to give us their perspective.
We felt it important as the Louisiana congressional delegation to get together and make a very general statement about our intentions, our willingness to work together as a delegation, our willingness to be responsive to the direction of the president, to work with local officials in outlining the necessary steps for recovery.
We are transitioning today from the search and rescue into the longer, more difficult complex issue of restoring the social structure. It's difficult to go to a community and realize there's not a fire station, there's not a police station, there isn't a grocery store, it simply is all gone. And the complex process of restoring communities is going to take time, resources and a great deal of creative thinking.
Each of us serves in slight different capacities within the Congress. I serve on Financial Services and Transportation.
From the Financial Services perspective, yesterday I announced with Chairman Oxley the redirection of an affordable housing fund within the GSE reform package, which has been ongoing for a number of years, to deploy those resources to the victims of Hurricane Katrina for the first two years.
The conservative estimate of resources that affordable housing program will make available to victims of the storm is in excess of $700 million over the two-year period. So it's a significant step; not sufficient to resolve all the problems, but it's $700 million ahead of where we were yesterday. And we expect the bill to be considered on the House floor as soon as leadership can schedule time for its consideration.
There are a number of issues relating to housing which I could address; also from the Transportation perspective. I'll yield to my colleague Dr. Boustany on that matter, who also is a member of the Transportation Committee.
But it is the message to Louisianians, we're in business, we're addressing the concerns, we're moving as fast and diligently and cooperatively as we can to respond to the identified needs. And from that perspective, each member will accordingly give their own view about their role in this recovery effort.
Congressman McCrery from Shreveport.
MCCRERY:
Congressman Jefferson and I are authoring a number of bills through the Ways and Means Committee. Last week, we completed a bill on welfare, making sure that states providing welfare to victims of Hurricane Katrina are not penalized for doing that, making welfare readily available to those victims wherever they might be. Steps like that. And also getting more money to the states, allowing them flexibility with a number of different pots of money from TANF.
This week -- in fact, today -- Congressman Jefferson and I will be putting on the floor an individual tax relief bill geared to individuals who were victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Next week we will have on the floor a bill dealing with unemployment compensation. And either next week or the week after, we believe, a bill dealing with business incentives, to try to attract business back to the affected areas, make sure that those businesses who were there have an incentive to come back there. And even provide an incentive for new businesses to locate in those affected areas.
We have a fairly full agenda related to Hurricane Katrina through the Ways and Means Committee. There will obviously be other issues that will arise as our delegation works together to formulate an overall plan for the recovery of the region. And I look forward, as a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, to working with my colleagues from Louisiana in developing and executing that plan at the appropriate time.
MCCRERY:
Senator Vitter?
VITTER:
Good morning. Good to be with all of you.
Great to be with my Louisiana colleagues.
Let me step back a few steps and make some more general overview comments about why we're here today. We're here as a completely united bipartisan Louisiana delegation to announce and outline our overall efforts to rebuild and restore Louisiana.
And we have a full outline to pass out. It's called "Project Pelican: Helping Louisiana Recover and Rebuild".
I want to make a few specific points. First of all, I want to emphasize that this is a completely joint, unified, bipartisan effort of the entire Louisiana delegation.
As soon as this disaster struck, from literally day 1, we started working in that way, everyone in the delegation together, all of our staffs together, to put forward a comprehensive package.
And we're announcing today the outline of that package, as I said, "Project Pelican: Helping Louisiana Recover and Rebuild".
I think it's a very important transition point to be talking about this package because I believe right now we're transitioning from the immediate issues of relief and saving lives to medium and longer term issues in terms of recovery, reconstruction, rebuilding, including rebuilding the job base. And this comprehensive package is designed to address that.
On the Senate side, Senator Landrieu and I will be introducing this package in terms of specific legislative language, early next week. And on the House side, as you have heard, all of our House members are united and coordinated and will be introducing the package in various components on the House side along the same general timetable.
And I think it's very important that we do this and begin to focus on those medium- and long-term needs. Top among them, in my opinion, is the effort to bring businesses and jobs back, because if we do no effectively, aggressively bring businesses and jobs back to Southeast Louisiana, we ultimately won't be able to bring people back. And so that is a big, big part of this effort.
I really want to thank all of my colleagues for all of their work on this. I think we very effectively pooled all of our know-how and resources together, divvying up responsibility, particularly according to committee assignment and expertise. And we have great, great leaders in our delegation, like Jim McCrery and Bill Jefferson on Ways and Means, like Richard H. Baker, has great seniority on financial institutions, with housing in particular, like all of the others. So I'm very excited about this comprehensive, unified package.
On the Senate side, I've already talked about this with Leader Frist and others. And he is very open and very eager to get these ideas and have this major input directly from the devastated area as the Senate begins to address the medium and long-term.
And I will be talking more about his approach and this package with the president tonight and with Leader Frist and Minority Leader Reid and others who will be in the devastated area tomorrow.
VITTER:
In addition, we're all reaching out beyond Louisiana, in particular to the Mississippi and Alabama delegations, to make this an even broader unified effort across the region.
So we're announcing it today, outlining it today and we'll be introducing the specific legislation relatively early next week.
Thanks.
LANDRIEU:
Thank you all very much.
Our delegation is completely united today in our effort to lay down for our colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, a plan to begin rebuilding Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
Before I get into my remarks, let me just take a moment of personal privilege to say that our thoughts and prayers are with David Vitter and his family. His mother is very, very ill. He's had to attend to some of those details on top of all of this that's he's been dealing with.
And so our prayers, David, are with you and with your family.
Our delegation stands united today in the face of the worst national disaster in the history of the United States.
Two weeks ago, Louisiana was struck by unprecedented twin disasters of a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 145 miles an hour and a flood due to massive levee breaks that flooded almost the entirety of the east bank of the great international city of New Orleans and the great parishes surrounding that city, Plaquemines and St. Bernard, parts of St. Tammany, Jefferson, even Tangipahoa and Washington.
This unprecedented national tragedy will require an unprecedented national response. One thing it will require is unity, passion, bold and innovative thinking.
To date, Congress has passed more than $60 billion in a down payment on emergency relief. That money is flowing to individual citizens, to families, to households, to businesses as we scramble to get our legs underneath us and to find high ground.
Substantive future investments from federal government must be rooted in the principles of accountability and a clear strategy for building a new South, a new South that is stronger, better and full of economic opportunity for all citizens.
This unity package
that our delegation will be introducing will be a starting point. We have heard
from our governor. We have heard from our statewide officials. We have heard
from our parish leaders. We have heard from our business leaders, our
faith-based community and individual citizens. Their thoughts, their hopes,
their dreams and their ideas are reflected in this package that our delegation
is presenting.
LANDRIEU:
There are some principles that I'd like to outline before the delegation members get into the specifics of their individual areas. Louisiana will be rebuilt by Louisianians. New Orleans will be rebuilt by New Orleanians. And the parishes around New Orleans will be rebuilt by the leaders in those parishes.
To the greatest extent possible, our reconstruction should be led by local officials, local businesses, local faith-based organizations that live on the banks of the Mississippi River, and not on the banks of the Potomac.
The winds of Katrina and the massive floods of the levee breaks saw no boundaries of race, economic status and age, and our plan will look beyond these artificial substantive and destructive barriers as well as we rebuild a great region in this nation.
Since the reach of this disaster is beyond anything we have ever faced, so should our solutions be beyond anything we have ever considered. We should not be afraid to try bold new approaches.
Because of the unprecedented displacement of more than 1 million homeowners, our delegation has at the top of its list complete mortgage relief, which Congressman Baker has been spearheading, and we cannot thank him enough.
I also would be remiss not to mention our delegation's unity call for full funding for coastal restoration -- full funding -- $14 billion for our Louisiana coastal plan and a robust revenue sharing plan of anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent, unless the government, of course, wants to give us 100 percent of our revenue. We will take that, and we will be happy.
My colleagues will now walk you through some of the key issues we plan on addressing in our legislation, from housing to health care to education, tax relief, veteran's care, and transportation.
I will only say that there could be no better delegation led by the people standing behind me. The men here who have made a career of service. They have been outstanding in their service, each one. And now each one is so well-positioned to try to bring the great strength and unity to our delegation as we build a plan for our country and for our region.
Thank you.
And I think I'm going to call on Congressman Jefferson.
JEFFERSON:
Thank you, Senator Landrieu.
And thank all of you who are here today. And thank our delegation in particular.
The ideas that are being discussed here today, that will be released here momentarily, are a reflection of the collective thinking of all of us in the delegation.
Beyond that, they are a reflection of the collective thinking of our colleagues too, in the Congress. There is not a moment that I sit in the cloakroom when someone doesn't come to me to advance some idea as to how we might help to recover our city, our state and our region.
And there's been a tremendous outpouring of support, not just prayers, but fundamental hard thinking by many members of Congress who are working with us through these ideas.
So last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with Speaker Hastert, who was, himself, very much engaged in how we might recover our region.
And I have the great pleasure of working with Jim McCrery every day on Ways and Means issues. And he has been a tremendous partner with the issues that we face in New Orleans. He's from the northern part of the state, but he is fully engaged in the things that we are facing in New Orleans.
New Orleans, of course, and the region around it has the most tremendous challenges. Eighty percent of our city has been underwater; 160,000 or so of our homes are destroyed; 110,000 businesses have been put out of business; and 400,000 or so people who worked every day aren't able to go to work.
It's a very, very tough situation. And we literally have to rebuild our city.
I don't want to repeat what Jim has said, but I do want to say that looking down the longer term for the Ways and Means Committee, we have a great deal of work to do with respect to trying to rebuild the housing in our city.
And Richard has already announced what's happening there with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac low-income housing program.
We also are going to work on the low-income housing tax credit, to make it deeper and more effective and to make sure that when we rebuild New Orleans, one of the goals that we have in mind is to make sure that the people who have invested there in the past, in their time, their effort, their lives, and where it makes up a part of their heritage and culture, that they have a chance to come back to the city.
A lot of folks who didn't make a lot of money. A lot of people are going to have trouble relocating. We want to make sure they have a chance to come back and be a part of this new New Orleans and this new vision for our future.
JEFFERSON:
We also have to do a lot of things to attract business back. I was here last week with Chuck Schumer, who was advancing ideas about what worked in lower Manhattan and how we might apply some of these things and adapt them to our situation in New Orleans.
We are a city, now, without a tax base. Our mayor is going to have trouble paying the fire and the police and the regular city services. We are a school board without a tax base. And we are a city that provides nearly 40 percent of the tax base of the state.
And, consequently, it has implications for what our state can and cannot afford.
And we're going to have to look at important things from our committee on the zero-interest tax bonds and on the tax-free credit bonds that we're going to try and get done down the road.
These are going to be important measures to advancing funds to our city while it goes through this period of getting itself back on its feet.
So I'm very pleased at the unified effort that our delegation is putting forth; as the effort we're getting from other members of Congress who are helping us out; of the attitude our leadership is taking toward this -- the president and all who are joined with us to help to make this work out.
And, down the line, we expect to have our city back on its feet and our people back in our city, our businesses thriving, and a newer, better, stronger New Orleans and Gulf Coast region.
ALEXANDER:
Thank you, and it is a pleasure for me to be here with you today. And I, too, want to say how much I enjoy seeing a delegation working together as closely as we have.
I represent an area of the state of Louisiana that received very little structural damage from the hurricane; had some agricultural crops destroyed.
But I represent the ninth poorest congressional district in the entire nation. We were already struggling with overcrowded and underfunded schools, inadequate health care system. Now we are dealing with taking care of and providing shelter and food and health care for many new neighbors from south Louisiana.
And we're not hesitating at doing what we can to provide that assistance. But it is a problem for us. We're spending most of our time answering questions about those who are providing health care for the needy now -- or will they be reimbursed? At what extent? How much do they need to go in debt?
On and on and on.
We have staff that are working on a lot of issues, but the delegation -- we will continue working with anything that we can do with the other delegation members, and especially the members who were hardest hit will do whatever's necessary.
Our main focus right now is on health care and housing. And we're working with the other members who are using those two issues as their main thrust.
We have a lot of people in, again, north Louisiana and central Louisiana who are in need of housing. We have shelters that are open, many under the direction of Red Cross, but many outside, who have not yet received any funding nor have they had contact with Red Cross, FEMA or any other groups.
They're privately funded, so they're struggling with the financial needs on a daily basis.
So we just are here to offer our services, and we'll get through this together. I again encourage those out there to not throw any more stones if you will. The burden that we all have here -- we're calling on our colleagues today for a pretty tough vote. Money is hard to come by, as you all know.
But we, at this time, we just don't need to be pointing fingers or throwing rocks at one another. So if we'll keep that in mind, we'll all come out better in the long run.
Thank you.
(UNKNOWN)
I want to echo a couple of things my colleagues have said. Along with Bill Jefferson, certainly I've got hundreds of thousands of constituents that are out of their homes. So we don't want to understate the very immediate needs on the ground -- in terms of questions people have about where their kids will go to school, how they pay their bills, what's going to happen in their mortgage payments?
But even as we mobilize resources to meet those immediate needs, it's also important, as others have said, that we also start the process, continue the process of rebuilding southeastern Louisiana the greater New Orleans area.
We've got an obligation to provide those incentives so there are jobs for people when they come back. We've got an obligation to make sure there's accountability in the billions of dollars that will be spent. We've got an obligation to make sure there's not the kind of bureaucracy, the impediments that were there in the initial phases, the initial responses, to the hurricane.
And, as Rodney has said so eloquently, we've also got a responsibility to work together in a bipartisan way, in a bicameral way, without finger-pointing, without trying to assess blame.
I've been asked to talk in particular about health care and about homeland security. There are obviously dramatic needs in health care on the ground in Louisiana.
CQ Transcriptions, Sept. 15, 2005