Schatz stresses need to include disaster aid to support Maui wildfire survivors

As Congress considers a short-term spending bill to keep the government open past the Sept. 30 funding deadline, US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) Thursday spoke on the Senate floor on the importance of including disaster aid to support survivors on Maui and across the country. In particular, Schatz stressed the need to provide disaster survivors with flexible, long-term assistance in the form of Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding which will enable them to rebuild their homes and communities as quickly as possible.

“For Lahaina to recover fully, it needs its people,” said Schatz. “And what those people need right now is tangible help. Help with building a home, with finding a job, with rebuilding their small business. The kind of help that will finally provide a reprieve from the constant worrying about what’s next, and hope that a better future awaits them after months of unimaginable suffering.”

Schatz continued, “We have an opportunity not to do something extraordinary but to do something absolutely essential. We have an opportunity to do the thing that Congress always does, which is when a community gets flattened, we’re there.”

The full text of Senator Schatz’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, can be found below.

“Congress’ task over the next 2 weeks is pretty straightforward: to keep the government open and avert a pointless and costly shutdown that would hurt so many Americans. And as we do that, the one priority we can’t afford to neglect or punt on is disaster aid. All across the country, in more than 20 states and territories, millions of Americans are reeling from disasters. Wildfires…hurricanes… droughts…floods. And having lost their homes, their communities, and their livelihoods, they’re counting on the federal government for help.

For people on Maui, help is needed immediately. More than a year after the deadly fires that levelled an entire town, claimed 102 lives, and stole just about everything from those lucky enough to survive, nothing is yet normal. Survivors in temporary housing are being forced to move every few months. Many have moved 5 times in the last year, shattering any semblance of stability they’ve cobbled together. Meanwhile, not a single home has been rebuilt so far. Not a single home has been rebuilt so far. That’s a dire emergency for any community in any scenario. But it’s especially worrying given temporary housing assistance from FEMA is due to expire in just 5 short months.

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The long and difficult recovery is squeezing survivors in other ways as well. With fewer jobs and smaller paychecks, people are having to figure out whether they can afford the most basic necessities. A recent poll found that 70 percent of survivors are cutting back on food and groceries. 70 percent…cutting back on food and groceries in the United States of America. And more than half are cutting back on medicine and other health care expenses. So it’s no surprise that people whose families have lived on Maui for generations are giving up and leaving the island altogether. And worse, thousands more are considering doing the same.

For Lāhainā to recover fully, it needs its people. For Lāhainā to recover, it needs its people. And what those people need right now is tangible help. Help with building a home…with finding a job…with rebuilding their small business. The kind of help that will finally provide a reprieve from the constant worrying about what’s next…hope that a better future awaits them after months of unimaginable suffering.

Providing that kind of help and relief to our fellow Americans in their hour of need is central to the promise of the federal government. There are not that many things that the federal government absolutely must do. There are not that many things that the federal government absolutely must do. But one of them is when there is a disaster and a state or a county or an island or a reservation or a town is devastated by a natural disaster, and the impact of that natural disaster exceeds the ability for that local unit of government to handle it, the president declares a disaster. And then FEMA comes in. After that HUD comes in with the support of the Congress through a program called Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery. What does that mean? It is flexible funding for those communities to rebuild. FEMA came to the table and did the disaster response. Now we have to recover. People are not recovered. People are not recovered.

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And so we have an opportunity not to do something extraordinary but to do something absolutely essential. We have an opportunity not to pass the Civil Rights Act but to do the thing that Congress always does. Do the thing that Congress always does which is when a community gets flattened, we’re there.

Now the good news is that even though the House proposal for a continuing resolution sort of fell flat on its face for other reasons, because it was six months and because it had this other nonsense in it, it did have 10 billion dollars for disaster recovery. Now, that was a very narrow program called the Disaster Relief Fund which absolutely needs those dollars. But the House position, the Republican House position is to fund disaster relief in the continuing resolution. We’ve got the chair and the ranking member in the United States Senate and the chair and the ranking member in the United States House Appropriations Committee saying they want to do disaster relief.

We are not fighting about this as a partisan issue. We are not fighting about this as a partisan issue. So we have an opportunity again not to do something unusual but to do the thing that we’ve always done. What would be unusual is to keep communities waiting for years now. Wildfires in New Mexico. Unfortunately, there are some wildfires in Nevada as we speak. 20 states waiting on help. Mississippi, Texas, Florida. All over the country, these communities need help. A lot of stuff we do is really hard. A lot of stuff we do is really partisan. This is neither of those things. We just have to decide that among the things that the federal government does is that we come to the table for any American when a disaster hits. Let’s get this done.“