WASHINGTON - The nation's beleaguered disaster response agency should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.
Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.
Taken together, the 86 proposed reforms charge the United States is still woefully unprepared for a disaster such as Katrina with the start of the hurricane season a little more than month away.
So what is the Senate recommending to replace FEMA? How about this:
The Senate report urges yet another overhaul of the embattled
Homeland Security Department — FEMA's parent agency — which was created three years ago and already has undergone major restructuring of duties.
It chiefly calls for a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within Homeland Security to continue receiving resources provided by the larger department.
The proposal drew disdain from Homeland Security and its critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling that they said wouldn't accomplish much.
The whole problem here was not just incompetence of Heckuva Job Brownie or stifled budget cuts by the Republicans, but rather it was the idea of sticking this office inside the Office of Homeland Security, where FEMA languished in exile. FEMA became a shambles because it had to compete within a bloated homeland security department for money, resources, and federal powers to plan and execute its mission goals from other encroaching security offices. So instead of taking FEMA out of Homeland Security and returning its powers, resources, and staff back to the pre-Homeland Security days, we've got Senate Republicans, and their token Democrats, calling for the abolishment of FEMA, and the creation of a new bloated emergency and disaster office--to be placed inside of the Department of Homeland Security. While they've added a few token powers--such as the directer can talk to the president, or that dramatic cuts to the budget or staffing would have to be approved by Congress--this National Preparedness and Response Authority would still have to compete with other Homeland Security offices for money and power. In other words, the National Preparedness and Response Authority would have to fight their own "turf wars" with other Homeland Security offices. We're talking major bloat here. And this National Preparedness and Response Authority is going to be sitting in the same place as FEMA was.
We've just changed the name from "FEMA" to "NaPRA."
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