Roland Gutierrez: “Mr. Chairman, I intended to offer an amendment this afternoon that I believe makes dollars and makes sense. My amendment…”

“Mr. Chairman, I intended to offer an amendment this afternoon that I believe makes dollars and makes sense. My amendment was based on the simple premise that government agencies responsible for administering programs with similar and complementary purposes can achieve greater success by working together in our urban communities. Interagency cooperation, the wise use of tax dollars and the development of innovative approaches that employ ideas from a variety of disciplines and sciences, should be promoted more often by this Congress. That is what my amendment sought to accomplish. Also, I believe that my amendment would have been timely. We are currently in the middle of what scientists predict will be the hottest July in some 600 years. We have never recorded a month hotter than the one we are currently experiencing. In the Midwest and New England, major utility corporations do not have the power to deal with the added costs of cooling urban areas. Rolling burnouts have already occurred and are predicted to occur with more regularity as the summer progresses and the heat rise. In Chicago, Commonwealth Edison says they are not sure who is going to get electricity at what point. However, the heat wave that currently grips our Nation, raising temperatures above 100 and the heat index above 110 in cities throughout America, is not an anomaly. This decade has witnessed the six hottest summers on record.”