On the recordDecember 28, 2012
I wish to make a few comments on what has transpired today on the floor of the Senate. First, some enormously important work has been done in regard to addressing the disaster caused by Hurricane Sandy. I know that in a number of States unprecedented devastation has occurred, and we should respond extremely quickly--more quickly than we have. I hope the House will immediately take up this package. Certainly, disaster relief delayed is disaster relief denied. So I hope the House will indeed move extremely quickly to address the devastation throughout the Northeast. I also wanted to note that tonight 55 Senators stood and said: As we assist the victims of Hurricane Sandy, we should also assist the victims of unprecedented drought and fires that devastated much of our country this last summer. How is it, we might wonder, that we had devastating fires in July and August and into September and devastating drought and we still haven't approved the disaster assistance? I must say it is 100 percent unacceptable. If you lost your ranch in a fire, if you lost your fencing, if you lost your corn, if you lost your livestock, and a program that would have helped that has always been in place for disaster assistance wasn't reauthorized, then you have been stranded since June or July or August. Perhaps in that interim you have lost your farm, perhaps you have lost your ranch, perhaps you have mortgaged everything to hold on.…





