Bill Nelson: “the amount just referred to as an urgent supplemental requested by the President of $3 billion is the money that is…”

“the amount just referred to as an urgent supplemental requested by the President of $3 billion is the money that is requested by the President for Florida's two hurricanes that just hit us. It does not include any amount for agricultural losses. The $3.1 billion includes Department of Defense losses, NASA losses, Small Business Administration losses. FEMA itself is $2 billion of that, with all of these ongoing expenses of the back-to-back hurricanes. What is missing from the President's request is the agricultural losses, which are substantial, from these two hurricanes. For example, the citrus crop alone is over $1/2 billion in losses. The nursery industry, which is a huge industry in Florida, has losses of $1/2 billion. Now, the question is, How do we address this? I was expecting that the President was going to include the agricultural losses in his request. He has not. So how do we address this, since the needs are obviously there? Presently, there are discussions going on between my office and the sponsors of this amendment. There is a little bit in this amendment for Florida agricultural losses from the two hurricanes, but it is somewhere in the range of $150 million to $300 million. That is a drop in the bucket compared to what the elected Florida agriculture commissioner has totaled up the losses at, which is $2 billion.”