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Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and I am ultimately going to be offering a unanimous consent for the body, but beforehand, I want to talk a little bit about what happened in North Carolina with the storm of Hurricane Helene. It actually starts a couple of days earlier when a weather system came into Western North Carolina and dumped inches and inches of rain on several--more than a dozen--major river basins and saturated the land.
Now we have Hurricane Helene come in through the Florida Panhandle, through Georgia, through South Carolina, and into North Carolina. It largely maintained the integrity of a category 1 storm, tropical storm, a couple hundred miles inland in a mountain range. It is a first-of-a- kind storm that is the most deadly in North Carolina history--and, folks, we have been hit by Florence, Matthew, Hugo; I can go through a long list--over 102 people dead, some still missing. We have families who are disconnected and will likely not even have electricity.
There is a community called Big Creek. Asheville is without drinkable water today. Businesses are suffering. The Small Business Administration is out of money. They are telling people who have had claims processed that ``Your claim has been approved'' and that as soon as the Federal Government replenishes the Small Business Administration account, then they will get the money. Think about that. If you are one of thousands of people in Western North Carolina in a land mass the size of the State of Massachusetts--ladies and gentlemen, that is how big the land mass was that had devastating storms. Mr. President, 102 people died, and hundreds of businesses are out of business.
I have a 20-mile segment of I-40 that is impassable. It is not from rockslides; it is because the land underneath the roads no longer exists. There are 5 miles that are going to have to be repaired. Twenty years ago, when we had a three-tenths-of-a-mile segment, it took 7 months to repair it. And that was just removing a landslide; the integrity of the roadbed was there. We don't have that anymore.
We have 80 miles of rail tracks gone. We have hundreds of businesses out of business right now. We have a major water system that hopes to have drinkable water by Christmas. We have people suffering. We have businesses suffering. We have a disaster that we have to respond to, and a lot of work is going to have to be done before the end of this Congress and certainly in the next Congress, when the nearly $50 billion between State and Federal dollars is going to have to be appropriated just to help North Carolina, not to mention the $3 billion of agricultural damage in Georgia, and I can go down the list to Florida.
We have a lot of work to do, but, folks, this is a time where you don't question what we are doing. You don't question how you pay for it. You get the money there, and you get these communities back on track.
I am not saying that we shouldn't be paying for this. We absolutely should. And up here in the rarified air of Washington, DC, we could say ``Well, let's just, you know, be responsible about this and let these people suffer until we get it,'' but that is not how it works in Western North Carolina. They need help now, today.
I will talk a little bit more about that before I offer my unanimous consent request, but before I do, if I may, I would like to pass it over to Senator Budd. I believe Senator Budd will pass it over to Senator Warner, and then I would like to reserve recognition at that time.
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, there are 233 people dead--102 in North Carolina, 7 still unaccounted for; the total damage estimated to be between $30 and $48 billion across seven States; in North Carolina, 1,400 landslides, 6,000 miles of road damage. One million-plus houses and businesses lost utilities. Some municipalities, like Asheville, like I said earlier, may not have drinkable water. This is a major urban center in western North Carolina that may not have drinkable water for tens of thousands of people before the end of August. That includes businesses that are struggling right now--think restaurants.
Struck during the peak of western North Carolina's season, the majority of our revenue occurs in western North Carolina, starting in October and ending in November. We have lost that. They are gone. A lot of these people lost loved ones who have businesses. Now they are just trying to keep their businesses afloat while they are going to funerals. And we tell them: Well, we have just got to wait for Congress before we can send you a check, because for the first time in this body we are going to demand a pay-for for disaster recovery.
Down about where the pages are sitting, a few months ago, Brian Schatz came to me--he is a Senator from Hawaii--and he said: Thom, I hope you will support me on the supplemental for the fires in Maui.
I said: Count me in, Brian, because--do you know what?--I have no doubt--and count me in every time for a disaster supplemental because this is when we cut the crap and do our jobs. So count me in because I am pretty sure, before this season is over, I am going to have to come to you for help in North Carolina.
I had no idea that it was going to be a record-setting deadly storm, but if we want to keep these communities vibrant--Asheville will come back. It has the critical mass. Canton, Clyde, Burnsville--I can list dozens of towns that are hanging in the breach. Let's give them a chance. And if we don't, then businesses are going to make the right business decision. There are two here, OK? We have the small businesses, and, hopefully, they can bridge the gap and recover.
Again, these are also people who have lost loved ones, and many of them lost their own homes. So while they are trying to figure out a place to live, they are all trying to figure out how they can run their businesses and how they can keep people employed.
Now, big businesses are looking at what the business network--or what the ecosystem is going to look like. We have major employers who may make the decision to leave if we don't send a signal that we are going to be there to help them recover.
I could go on ad nauseam, but I am telling you, when I tell you it is a crisis in North Carolina when a major road like I-40 is going to be down for years, I can't tell people, just because I don't like the way it gets appropriated, it sucks for you that you may have to go out of business while I try to fix the dysfunction in Washington. This is a time for us to act and do like we have done every time with a disaster supplemental.
So--oh. And, by the way, in advance, Senator Paul is going to offer an amendment that I love so much I would like to marry it. I am also going to object to it because it is the right amendment at the wrong time. I am looking forward to having that incorporated in a vehicle that my Democrat colleagues are going to hate that I hope we get passed in the next Congress, but there is no time for that now. I have said that, in spite of the fact that I support it, I want to be the one to object to it because I want mission certainty here. My mission is to get this disaster supplemental for the Small Business Administration passed through like we have on every other disaster supplemental to this day.
465, H.R. 6651. I further ask that the Tillis-Warner substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. TILLIS. I think I know the answer to this, Senator Paul, but I just want to confirm it. Do you recall how you voted on the PACT Act?
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Mr. TILLIS. I thought he did.
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Mr. TILLIS. And I reserve the right to object to that motion.
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Mr. TILLIS. I have subsequently asked the Chair--
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Mr. TILLIS. I have subsequently asked the Chair--
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Mr. TILLIS.--if the Senator from Kentucky--
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President.
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Mr. TILLIS. I don't know the answer to it. I think he voted against it. I am not sure. The other question I was going to ask him is has he ever voted for a disaster supplemental that wasn't offset. Those were the two questions I was going to ask. I will find it out later on.
Look, our State motto is ``Esse Quam Videri.'' It says, ``To be rather than to seem.''
This is a disingenuous offer to amend my bill. Let me tell you why. Maybe it will even be in a fundraising campaign later this week: ``I am fighting to dismantle the Green New Deal, and Tillis objected to doing that today.''
This bill, if it got amended, has no prayer. I came to the Senate to make a difference, not to make a point. I get the point.
There are a lot of things in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the Green New Deal that need to be clawed back, and I look forward to, under President Trump's leadership, having that vote.
I assume that Senator Paul knows how to count votes. He has to know that he doesn't have the votes to get this bill done if it is amended.
To be rather than to seem. I am focused on getting North Carolina back on track and not playing a game on this Senate floor. I am going to object to this, Mr. President, in a minute because it is a game.
We never fund disaster supplementals because we know that people are hurting.
You take that case to Ukraine, to Asheville. You take it to Burnsville. You take it to Banner Elk. You take it to Cashiers, Senator Paul, and I will go with you, and I will see if they are as worried about that or if they are just worried about making sure that their families have a place to live and their businesses have a chance to survive.
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Mr. TILLIS. Ladies and gentlemen, I have prided myself on working on a lot of legislation over the last 10 years, and I am proud of the fact that I figured out how to get votes in this Chamber and get votes in the other Chamber and get bills to the President's desk. Let me explain to you how this process works. We were going to pass a bill out of here. Even if it is not funded, I am pretty sure that the House is going to insist on some sort of a pay-for.
What we are doing here is playing a game of being disingenuous. Folks, I support what Senator Paul does. By the way, I will be checking the fundraising emails to see if we are fighting to--that Tillis is against the Green New Deal dismantling. Count me in for that.
What I am not for is putting a poison pill in here that prevents this bill from going to the House. My colleagues in the House intend to get a pay-for. They intend to get a pay-for. I mean, how hard is it? I have got a community college education, and I am smart enough to figure this out. So are a lot of other people from community colleges. But this is a game. It will be paid for in the House, or it won't pass. We have a majority there. So instead of facilitating the process to move it there and thus find a way to offset it, we are trying to kill it here.
I support so many provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan being repealed and using the money for better purposes, and disaster recovery is one of them. But that is not what we are here to do today in this Congress with that President. That is what we are going to be here to do next year, in the next Congress, with a different President.
So I just want to set the record straight. I don't like games being played. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know I try to be evenhanded. I told Senator Mark Warner I was going to object because it was a procedural game. And if it is characterized as anything other than that, let me know who you are because I will educate you. Thank you.
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Mr. TILLIS. Yes. I am back to the happy Thom now.
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Mr. TILLIS. Without a doubt, Senator Warner. And, quite honestly, there are some people today saying: If I have got to wait until next Congress, I have got to fold up. I am trying to find a place to live, and I am also trying to keep my business afloat.
Absolutely, it gives them hope. And our failure to act doesn't.
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