FEMA's Ineptitude in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

FEMA'S INEPTITUDE IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA -- (House of Representatives - September 07, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reichert). Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue a discussion I began last evening about who is responsible for much of the human destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration has been in charge of relief efforts, and it is clear they have failed the American people. Why were relief efforts so painfully slow to get started and, in fact, FEMA not on the ground after 4 days?

Meanwhile, trying to fill the gap of a failed Federal administration, our thousands of first responders, volunteers, members of the National Guard and active duty military personnel and religious and committed Americans who are performing exemplary service and deserve the highest praise.

President Truman used to have a sign on his desk that said, ``The buck stops here.'' Truly, the buck in this instance stops with the President of the United States. It is he who appointed the Cabinet and subcabinet level individuals tasked with organizing and implementing the plan to deliver timely relief to those in need, and they failed to do that. Yes, the President holds responsibility. His appointees hold responsibility. Specifically, these include the Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, and the Federal Emergency Management Director, Mike Brown, and several other individuals.

And it has been quite painful for me, as a Member of Congress who served on the FEMA Oversight Committee for a number of years, to witness the constant failures of judgment by this team, starting with the President himself when he took office, and importantly, early on in his administration, hollowed out FEMA, taking away its Cabinet status, saying that it should no longer be an independent agency that reported directly to the President, instead rolling it into the gargantuan Department of Homeland Security and tasking that with eliminating terrorism.

FEMA is tucked three levels down in this lumbering massive bureaucracy of 170,000 people which still cannot figure out how to answer a letter.

I voted ``no'' on that reorganization; was on the losing side when the President tried to pass that through Congress and was successful, and have now joined with my dear colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), to call for the removal of FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security in order to restore it as a fully independent agency headed by an actual professional with direct reporting to the President of the United States.

Now, the first person that the President appointed to head FEMA was his campaign director from Texas who ran the Bush campaign in the year 2000. His name is Joe Albaugh, and he accepted the FEMA position in 2001. And here is what he said back then. He characterized the organization as an oversized entitlement program, and counseled States and cities to rely instead on faith-based organizations like the Salvation Army and the Mennonites Disaster Service. As important as they are, those organizations are not equipped to handle a national disaster. Thank God we have them, but even they know they are not up to the task fully. So the tone was set back in the first Bush administration. And it is instructive to see how the President's appointees have been locked in over at FEMA.

We know that Mr. Chertoff, who heads the Department of Homeland Security, is an attorney. He has spent more time in courtrooms prosecuting the Mafia than managing large-scale crises like these.

Under him is Michael Brown, the Director of FEMA, who has absolutely no experience in national disasters or emergencies. In the last 10 years before being appointed by President Bush as head of FEMA, he earned about $100,000 a year in a position with the International Arabian Horse Association, where his job was to ensure that judges followed rules and to investigate allegations of cheating in horse races.

Most frightening is, after he got his position, and when Katrina hit, he waited 5 hours after Katrina actually reached land to officially request help and legal authority to send rescue workers and supplies into the affected regions. What was he doing during those 5 hours, and why was he not more active ahead of time in evacuating people?

As noted by the Center for American Progress, those under Mr. Brown, his deputies, make him look qualified. The number two at FEMA is Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode, who was an event planner or advance man for the Bush Presidential campaign. He had absolutely no emergency management experience before joining FEMA. And under him, the number three person at FEMA, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris, was a press flak at the Bush campaign. He previously worked for Maverick Media, the firm that produced TV supports for Bush's campaigns.

I say, who holds responsibility? The President of the United States holds responsibility. The buck stops with him.

God bless the people who have suffered and God bless this country.

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On CNN, just his second day in Louisiana, Brown placed blame on the victims for not evacuating.

Most frightening, though, is the fact that Mike Brown waited until five hours after Katrina reached land to officially request help and legal authority to send rescue workers supplies into the affected regions. Despite three to four days of constant alarms that Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane poised to strike Louisiana, Brown did practically nothing to prepare for the devastation that was predicted in the event of just such an occurrence.

In spite of the dire warnings of what would happen should a Category 4 or 5 Hurricane strike New Orleans (and the Gulf Coast in General) Mike Brown sat patiently by while the Hurricane delivered 100+ mph winds and a 25-foot storm surge into the region--obliterating towns, killing thousands of Americans and causing what will be hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

Mike Brown is not the only FEMA official with little to no experience, though. As noted by the Center for American Progress, ``Brown's top deputies, however, make him look qualified. The number two at FEMA, Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode, was an event planner (``advance man'') for Bush's presidential campaign. He had absolutely no emergency management experience before joining FEMA. The number three at FEMA, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris, was a press flak at the Bush campaign. He previously worked for Maverick Media, the firm that produced TV spots for Bush's campaigns. Morris also has no emergency management experience. In contrast, the top deputies of Clinton-era FEMA Director James Lee Witt ran regional FEMA offices for at least 3 years before assuming senior positions in Washington.

FEMA spokesperson Natalie Rule said the absence of direct managing emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need ``the ability to keep the organization running.''

That's all well and good, except for the fact that this Administration cut more than six hundred million dollars last year from funding for local administrators and offices--diverting it to other accounts. Effectively, poor planning and management has created a vacuum of leadership anywhere in this agency that Congress and former President Clinton worked so hard to ``fix'' in the early to mid-1990's.

As former chief-of-staff at FEMA Jane Bullock said yesterday, ``We knew that about 120,000 of the people who needed to be evacuated did not have cars, so we would have to position buses. The buses were not there. We knew that the levees would be under heavy stress and so we should position barges with pumps up the Mississippi in preparation for flooding. This was not done. We knew that the Superdome would be used as a refuge of last resort so we should pre-position food and medical supplies. They were not there. There was a lack of leadership.''

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