Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993 TAG: 9307280111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"It could get worse," Clinton told governors from six flood states on a day the Missouri and Kansas rivers were still rising.
"There are still a lot of problems out there," the president later told a meeting of Democrats. "A lot of things could still go wrong. The front needs to break up so the South at least can get some rain or we're going to have some agricultural disasters there."
The governors and the president helped pressure the House to put aside procedural arguments which had delayed the bill since Thursday. It finally passed, 400-27, and was sent to the Senate, where speedy action was anticipated.
The largest share of spending, $1.92 billion, would go for direct aid to flood victims and to cover crop losses. The remainder would go for jobs; repair of housing, highways and flood-control works; loans; and a variety of other relief. The bill also increases the farm disaster payment for losses beyond 75 percent of the crop.
The money for crop losses also could be used to compensate victims of drought in the Southeast as well as hail and other weather disasters elsewhere.
In the House, no one objected to the spending, only to whether Congress should first find a way to cover the cost with offsetting cuts elsewhere.
Thursday, the House narrowly refused to consider the bill before those offsets were agreed upon. On Tuesday, swayed by pressure from the governors, Clinton and angry victims, it voted 224-205 to go ahead and act on the bill.
"When you have unforeseen emergencies and circumstances that demand immediate action, you don't stop everything and go through a budget process," said House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo. "Not today, not when people are out of their houses, not when people are unemployed, not when people are working day and night putting up sandbags to save their lives."
All members of the Virginia delegation voted for the bill. Rep. Leslie Byrne, D-Fairfax, one of 15 who voted Tuesday to go ahead with the bill after blocking it last week, said, "I couldn't let those people in the Midwest hang by a thread any longer."
Also Tuesday, residents of the Kansas City area shored up levees and waited for the water to go down as the Missouri and Kansas rivers bonded and surged toward crests.
Though both rivers crested at midday Tuesday at record levels, the tantalizing question remained unanswered: Would the levees hold?
"We've had water on the levees for a very long time, and they were made to pass water quickly, not to hold it," said John Ferrell, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.
by CNB