Jim Baird: “Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from South Dakota and also express my gratitude to the chairman of our…”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from South Dakota and also express my gratitude to the chairman of our committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Talent) and to the ranking member from New York (Ms. Velazquez). Together they have worked to develop this bill which I think has a wonderful potential to help small business owners reduce the cost of disasters before they happen rather than after. As the gentleman from South Dakota has indicated, the bill before us today is virtually identical to a bill that this House passed on March 2. It establishes a demonstration project at the SBA to make financing available to small businesses so they can make improvements to businesses that just might reduce property loss and could increase worker safety in the event of a natural disaster. Mr. Speaker, my district in southwest Washington happens to be one of the more disaster-prone in the Nation: We have Mount Saint Helens, we have periodic flooding, and recently in the towns of Kelso and Olympia we have had landslides which have claimed in the case of Kelso more than 140 homes, and in the case of Olympia more than 60 homes have been rendered unstable. I have been working with these good people since before I came to office, and I feel we have to be working more to help people prepare for disasters before they happen as well as cope with disasters after the fact.”