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Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, hurricane season ends November 30--2 months left to go. Last week marked the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene, and I see from reports that the area of North Carolina most affected is still terribly affected. It was such a severe storm that people in Louisiana went from Louisiana to help North Carolina and other States with their emergency operations on the ground.

This weekend saw two category 4 storms churning in the western Atlantic. Thankfully, they do not appear that they will hit our coast. Still, the storms remind people in Louisiana and other States that flooding is not a matter of if but, rather, when.

Now, Democrats, as we know, are pushing us toward a government shutdown. What does that mean for the National Flood Insurance Program? Imagine you are about to close on a house in 2 days and the bank requires you to have flood insurance. If you are in a special flood hazard area--by the way, over half of Louisiana is a special flood hazard area--and you are purchasing a house with help from a federally backed loan, you will not be closing on that house, nor will you be able to renew your existing policy, all because Democrats have rejected a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open.

Let me repeat: They are walking away from a bill that simply extends the existing budget for 7 weeks to allow for further negotiation. Instead, they demand a highly partisan bill which would add more than $1 trillion to our Nation's debt. They want taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants, transgender surgery for minors, and to cut $50 billion from the rural hospital fund Republicans created as part of our working families tax cuts bill.

Now, back to flood insurance, Americans are left wondering how a shutdown will affect them. While Democrats are writing checks to the far left, folks are wondering if they can close on their house.

Now, I will tell you what the American people care about. They want the government to do its job. They want disaster recovery when needed. They want flood insurance that works. They want rural hospitals to stay open. They want energy security and a balanced budget--not trillion- dollar add-ons that only serve a political agenda. The American people deserve accountability. They expect Congress to put their needs before partisan politics.

If this shutdown happens, it means that the National Flood Insurance Program cannot renew policies. That is 500,000 people in Louisiana and millions across the country unable to renew policies while we are still in hurricane season. It will mean delays in disaster aid and emergency response coordination. It means uncertainty for families still recovering from Hurricane Helene and other past storms. Now, this is personal for folks in my State.

If Democrats would stop trying to please the fringe of their party and start focusing on the real, immediate needs of the American people--like keeping the government open, maintaining flood insurance, and protecting access to rural healthcare--we could solve this today.

So I ask my fellow Senators who are Democrats: Who are you working for? Are you working for the American families watching the weather, hoping the next storm doesn't wipe out everything they have built? Are you working for veterans waiting on care, the seniors relying on Social Security checks, or the communities who count on rural hospitals in a crisis? Or are you working for political activists and special interest groups that have nothing to do with the lives of the people you were elected to serve?

Mr. President, the path forward is simple: Pass a clean bill to keep the government open. The Economy

Mr. President, middle-class Americans are taking it on the chin. If you ask anybody buying groceries and you start talking about high grocery prices, their heads just start to nod. American farmers can't hire workers to pick their crops. Foreign products are being tariffed. Beef and coffee prices are through the roof. For the first time ever since it has been tracked, ground beef is over $6 a pound, and it keeps rising. To put that into perspective, it was under $4 when President Trump left office in 2021.

People can't afford to live. If you combine the cost of the things they absolutely need--their healthcare, their flood insurance, property and casualty or homeowners insurance, car insurance, mortgages, car payments--after that, they are sitting around an empty kitchen table, worried as to whether there is enough left in their pocketbook to buy the groceries to feed their family.

Now, with 67 percent of Americans saying they are living paycheck to paycheck, you can imagine how many empty kitchen tables there are.

Last week, I got a message from a woman in my State who lives on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. She told me this is the problem she is facing: She can't afford to live and to pay for her groceries. By the way, she is a teacher--a good job--and has been for 26 years. But she can't afford to live and pay for groceries?

The middle class is taking it on the chin, and a lot of Americans are in the same situation as she is. No matter how hard they work, no matter how many jobs they work--sometimes two or three--they can't keep up.

Now, since 2000, housing demand has grown more than housing supply. Roughly 46 percent of Americans let their credit card payments roll over month to month because they cannot afford to pay in full. That is almost 50 percent of people in the United States who are not paying their credit card bills, and that is with 21 percent to 26 percent interest rates on them. Almost a quarter of Americans don't think they will ever pay off their credit card debt. And the hole keeps getting deeper.

Now, Republicans are trying to address this. In the working families tax cuts bill, we increased wages by eliminating taxes on tips and taxes on overtime. Most seniors will not pay taxes on their Social Security payments. We increased the child tax credit. We incentivized companies to start building in the United States now, instead of waiting for 10 years. We attract private investment into low-income communities by giving investors a tax break in exchange for developing economically distressed communities. Our goal is to create jobs--better paying jobs--as we spur this revitalization.

We can increase affordable housing for families and workers by expanding and strengthening the low-income housing tax credit, which will help build more than 1.6 million affordable homes nationwide over the next decade.

Again, we give tax incentives now for those better paying manufacturing and construction jobs, while working to decrease the high cost of healthcare with, if you will, programs to incentivize the education of more nurses, to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and to lower the cost of health insurance.

We have proposed ways to lower the cost of the National Flood Insurance Program, which in my State is one thing that just saps from people's pocketbooks. Now, the government shutdown will not help. It creates unnecessary worry and puts a strain on working families, veterans, and folks living on a fixed income.

The American middle class is taking it on the chin. Republicans are working to give the American people hope instead of one more body blow.

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