Congress tackles Hurricane Katrina relief, Sept. 2, 2005
On this day in 2005, Congress returned early from its summer recess to provide financial aid to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The U.S. Constitution grants congressional leaders the authority to recall Congress “whenever the public interest shall warrant it.” The House and Senate had scheduled a recess from late July to Sept. 6, 2005. However, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) the majority leader, called both houses of Congress back into session to provide economic aid to the stricken Gulf Coast.
The lawmakers swiftly enacted a $10.5 billion emergency aid package. Their rapid action reflected, at least in part, widespread criticism that after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29 the federal relief response had been slow and uncoordinated.
Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.) said: “It is critical that we deliver this help today, and we have. Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, but this is not just a Gulf Coast disaster.” Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) said: “All Americans can be proud of the hard and sometime heart-rending work being done by local, state and federal emergency workers ... Those who were watching the news reports, as well as those … in the midst of the devastation, were united in one question: Why did the rescue efforts take so long?”
Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.) asked her fellow members to get involved: “We need to take a trip to the Gulf, meet the people there, help serve the homeless, help serve the hungry, take clothes … We need to be personally involved ourselves. And we need to get on the road right away.”
When the 10th anniversary of the hurricane came last year, federal officials estimated that taxpayers had eventually laid out some $120 billion to deal with the aftereffects of the disaster. About $76 billion of that sum went to Louisiana projects — nearly three times the size of the state’s annual budget.
But that record-breaking federal response wasn’t assured when failed federally built levees left 80 percent of New Orleans underwater. Hastert told reporters that it “looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.” When asked whether the federal government should spend billions of dollars to rebuild the city, he said: “I don’t know. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Hastert soon apologized for his remarks. He ultimately joined a bipartisan phalanx of congressional leaders, along with President George W. Bush, in agreeing to support the aid package.
During the initial debate, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) told Sen. Mary Landrieu, (D-La.) that House GOP leaders remained unwilling to allow any forgiveness of emergency disaster loans. Dropping the forgiveness language, Vitter said, was the only way to win House approval of the legislation, which would exceed the standard $5 million cap on disaster loans — a cap that was clearly insufficient given the scope of the destruction.
It would take two bills in 2007 and 2013, both sponsored by Landrieu and backed by the entire Louisiana and Mississippi delegations, to allow most of the loans to be written off. By 2014, almost $400 million in loans, or more than 95 percent, had been forgiven.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE HOUSE HISTORIAN AND CLERK OF THE HOUSE OFFICE OF ART AND ARCHIVES