Byron Dorgan: “I am more concerned than I was before I left my chair. My assumption has been that we negotiated a disaster relief…”

“I am more concerned than I was before I left my chair. My assumption has been that we negotiated a disaster relief package. It is significant. It is important. And it is vitally needed by the areas in my part of the country but many others around America as well, and I hope very much that there is no one here who seriously entertains backing away from that commitment. In any event, one of the reasons that I ask this question is the piece that the Senator from Mississippi provided as samples of nonemergency spending in the supplemental included, for example, $694 million for the highway trust fund. And let me just describe something. Maybe the Senator does not understand this, but we have, for example, in North Dakota right now a highway called Highway 57. It is a link to the Spirit Lake Indian Nation. It is now under water, incidentally. That Indian nation is virtually isolated out there, and there are young kids who need doctors' attention and medical help who at this point have to go far around in order to get it. Their lives are at risk. Commerce stops. Emergency medical assistance is not available. And so we need to deal with these emergency road needs, for example, in Devils Lake which has been flooded every year.”