Dan Coats: “I am cognizant of the fact that we will have a series of votes beginning in just 15 minutes, and so even though the…”

“I am cognizant of the fact that we will have a series of votes beginning in just 15 minutes, and so even though the unanimous consent request on this amendment is for 30 minutes equally divided, I am going to try to judiciously use this time between myself and Senator Alexander to explain why we are offering this amendment, and hopefully our colleagues will be persuaded to support us when we vote on this probably tomorrow. We are all, of course, sensitive to the pain and damage inflicted by Mother Nature in the Northeast. In fact, some of the Northeast is getting some more of that pain with a storm up there today. No State or region in our country should be left to fend for itself after a storm as devastating as Hurricane Sandy. It is important to understand that many things have overwhelmed the ability of the States and local communities to deal with some of the effects of this, and that is why the Sandy emergency supplemental is before us attached to H.R. 1 and why we will be voting on that, I assume, tomorrow. There are two versions before us; one is the Senate Democrats' emergency supplemental proposal. That totals $60.4 billion. It includes nearly $13 billion in mitigation funding. That goes for the next storm, not this storm. There is $3.46 billion for Army Corps of Engineers, $500 million of which is projects from previous disasters; $3 billion to repair or replace Federal assets that do not fall into the category of emergency need.…”