Senate bill provides up to $800 million for region
By Philip Brasher
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – A Senate committee has approved an expanded package of disaster relief for the Upper Midwest to help rebuild flooded cities and aid livestock producers battered by blizzards.

Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota stand to receive $700 million to $800 million under the supplemental spending bill passed Wednesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee, said a panel member, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

"It’s a substantial amount of money available to the region," Dorgan said.

A House version contained $698 million for the region.

Congress will consider more money for the area once the full extent of the damages are known, said the committee’s chairman, Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The major differences in the bills:

• The Senate bill includes $100 million for community development block grants to rebuild cities in all 23 states affected by natural disasters. The House version does not have the grants.
• The Senate version has a $50 million program to partially reimburse producers who lost cattle and other livestock. Most of the losses are in the northern Plains. There is nothing for this in the House bill.
• The Senate bill has $24 million to rebuild railroads in the region, compared to $10 million in the House version.

Also in the Senate version is $5 million to design a outlet to alleviate flooding on Devils Lake in North Dakota. There was no money for this in the House version.

The Senate bill also would authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to raise levees protecting the city of Devils Lake. The outlet is opposed by Canada and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for environmental reasons.

A House-Senate conference committee will have to work out differences between the two versions.

In the meantime, the bill is tied in a partisan dispute over a provision in the Senate bill aimed at preventing a government shutdown if Congress and the White House can’t agree on the 1998 budget.

Although President Clinton has threatened to veto the Senate legislation over that provision, Stevens said it should have little impact on flooding victims in the Upper Midwest.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has the money it needs to continue sending checks to the region, Stevens said.

"What we’re doing is not going to delay one single payment," he told Dorgan.

However, livestock producers would not be reimbursed for their losses until the bill becomes law because aid provided by the legislation is a new program, he acknowledged.

Dorgan pleaded with Republicans to remove the budget provision from the bill. "Tens of thousands of people ... are waiting to see what kind of assistance Congress will provide," he said.

In the end, Dorgan was one of two committee Democrats to vote for the disaster relief package, which was approved 16-12.