Byron Dorgan: “Next, Madam President and the chairman of the committee, I intend to offer three amendments that are relatively small…”

“Next, Madam President and the chairman of the committee, I intend to offer three amendments that are relatively small, targeted amendments that deal with the issue of disasters, natural disasters. Most of us recognize that we have spent a lot of time talking about disaster relief and issues affecting people dealing with flood disasters, earthquake disasters, tornadoes and fires and so on. We had a circumstance in our region of the country where the Red River had a massive flood, a 500-year flood. We had 90 percent of a community of 50,000 people who were displaced out of their homes, many hundreds of those homes--nearly 1,000 homes--have been totally and permanently destroyed. In many of those cases, all of their records were destroyed as well. People left with a half hour's notice and only the clothes they were wearing and lost everything. The Internal Revenue Service knowing that this happened the first week or so of April, second week of April, they said, ``We will allow an extension to file income tax returns.'' It is pretty clear people fleeing a flood and who have lost everything, including all of their records, will not be able to file tax returns on April 15.”