Frank Pallone: “let me also thank the chairman and the ranking member for putting forth House Resolution 12, of which I am a cosponsor…”

“let me also thank the chairman and the ranking member for putting forth House Resolution 12, of which I am a cosponsor, which I do think is very significant in light of what we have witnessed in the aftermath of the tsunami over the last 10 days. I want to say, first of all, that this resolution as we know talks about a number of things that we need to do and that to some extent we have already done. One is to provide humanitarian assistance. I know the President has pledged $350 million, which may seem like a lot, but I frankly think that we probably will end up needing significantly more in terms of humanitarian assistance. In addition to that, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) mentioned long-term reconstruction, development assistance because we must remember that many of the people no longer have a means of livelihood, fishermen who no longer have their fishing boats, farmers whose land may be salted and have no longer the ability to farm. We have to think in terms of long-term reconstruction and development aid. And finally what I call the early warning system. There has been a lot of discussion and I think there is a need to expand the tsunami early warning system that exists in the Pacific not only to the Indian Ocean but also possibly to the Atlantic Ocean and throughout the world. We know that this can be done fairly inexpensively. We are talking about maybe 5 to $10 million for the Atlantic, maybe $20 million at the most for the Indian Ocean.”