Hearing of the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee - Opening Statement of Rep. Titus, Hearing on "Disaster Preparedness: DRRA Implementation and FEMA Readiness."

Hearing

I want to take a minute to make a statement to address the comments that were made by the President this morning that directly impacts and threatens this subcommittee's work.

As you all in this room know, and we on the committee know, this nation's infrastructure is crumbling. As a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I'm committed to working with anyone who is serious about making the sound, long-term investments that will boost our economy. But today the President showed that apparently he's not very serious.

In fact, he said that he won't work with Congress on any legislation -- even if it benefits this country -- unless Congress ignores its Constitutional responsibility to carry out oversight of the Administration. If the President wants to hold good-paying jobs hostage, that's his choice, but it certainly isn't mine. And I don't believe it is of this committee.

This subcommittee has jurisdiction for overseeing the General Services Administration -- the government agency that the Office of Inspector General said "improperly ignored the Emoluments Clauses" when it let Trump keep his D.C. hotel and openly profit from the presidency. We have serious questions about that and this Administration's decision to stop the FBI from relocating its headquarters, thereby preventing a potential hotel competitor from moving in.

The President wants to present us with a false choice between legislating and investigating. Well we're not going to accept that deal. It is beneath the dignity of the office for the President to suggest that he'll allow bridges to collapse, airports to overcrowd, and ports to deteriorate unless we end our investigations. It's the intent of this committee to move forward on both of those fronts because that's our charge.

I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today as we examine how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is implementing the Disaster Recovery Reform Act -- or DRRA -- as well as take a look at the readiness of the emergency management workforce on the eve of wildfire and hurricane seasons. Over many years and through several catastrophic disasters, this Subcommittee has worked with FEMA and the broader emergency management stakeholder community to examine the challenges our nation faces as natural disasters continue to strike with more frequency and greater intensity. The result is DRRA, which is a transformative update to the Stafford Act.

There are some who believe that climate change is a hoax and others who believe that any threat is limited only to coastal residents, but it's impossible to dispute the rising costs of natural disasters and the fact that there are investments that can be made to build greater resilience across the country. The impacts of these more regular one-percent-chance rain storms, longer flood seasons, stronger hurricanes that barrel further inland, and extremely large and intense wildfire complexes must be lessened -- they're a threat to the health and safety of tens of millions of Americans.

With DRRA, Congress has signaled the importance of building resilience so that Americans and communities impacted by disaster are able to get up on their feet again, with minimal losses of life or property. I'm assuming the President agrees, otherwise he could have vetoed it. Each of us up here at some point in our lives has noted that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. DRRA is the statutory embodiment of that.

We know -- based upon the analysis of the National Institute for Building Sciences -- that significant cost savings can be found in mitigation projects and the adoption of consensus-based building codes and standards:

-There's $11 in savings for every $1 spent building to the 2018 International Residential Code and International Building Code;

-There's $6 in savings from future disaster response and recovery spending for every $1 in FEMA, EDA, and HUD mitigation grants; and

-There's $4 in savings for every $1 spent building above and beyond certain hazard mitigation measures in the 2015 International Building Code.

That's a lot of money we could save from future disaster supplementals.

DRRA provides stable funding for a new national Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program, and also makes changes to Stafford targeted specifically at addressing the staggering wildfire challenge facing the West. It also encourages communities to build back to the most recent, strongest consensus-based codes and standards. Since the Federal Government is paying for at least 75 percent of major disaster recovery costs, it's necessary for us to protect our investment by requiring stronger, smarter, and more resilient rebuilding. But here we are -- on the verge of the busiest time of year for emergency managers, and approaching two years after the devastating impacts of Harvey, Irma, Maria, and countless catastrophic wildfires in the West -- and progress on DRRA implementation has been slow, and FEMA's workforce is stretched thin.

My colleagues and I are eager to hear about your progress, but we also want you to understand how important it is that the Agency seize this opportunity to be bold in implementing these changes, because the scale of the disasters impacting this country isn't letting up.

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