Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - June 28, 2006)
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am very pleased to join my friend and colleague, Senator Lieberman, in introducing a bill that addresses an urgent challenge facing our Nation: the need to ensure a strong and effective capability to deal with natural and manmade disasters, whether they are hurricanes and ice storms or terrorist attacks and pandemic diseases.
The U.S. Emergency Management Authority Act is intended to remedy many of the glaring deficiencies that we all saw in the preparation and response to Hurricane Katrina. The U.S.-EMA bill reflects the evidence that the Senate Homeland Security Committee examined during the course of an exhaustive and bipartisan 7-month investigation. The committee convened 22 hearings, heard testimony from 85 witnesses, conducted more than 325 formal interviews, and examined more than 838,000 pages of documents.
The result is a 737-page report that contains 88 recommendations for improving our emergency management system at all levels of government.
Our legislation is an important first step toward implementing the committee's major recommendations for reforming FEMA. We will, as my colleague, Senator Lieberman, indicated, be introducing subsequent legislation to implement other recommendations.
The four key features of the bill that we introduce today will, first, give the new authority statutory protection against actions that could diminish its capabilities and effectiveness, such as departmental reorganizations; second, ensure that the administrator of U.S.-EMA has direct access to the President; third, reunite preparedness functions with response capabilities while expanding U.S.-EMA's authority over other key functions; and fourth, strengthen the authority's regional focus with Federal strike teams for faster, more coordinated and effective responses.
Senator Lieberman and I strongly believe that the best way to achieve the goal of improving the Federal Government's ability to protect American citizens from disaster, to mitigate the impacts, and to promote recovery is to strengthen and expand the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which we have proposed to rename the U.S. Emergency Management Authority. As we saw so starkly and so tragically demonstrated last year, FEMA simply must be made far more effective.
We believe FEMA needs special status within the Department of Homeland Security. Our bill would extend to the reconstituted FEMA the same kinds of statutory protections against departmental reorganizations and raids on resources that currently shield the Coast Guard and the Secret Service. I acknowledge the critical role played by the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Lott, in helping us draft this portion of the bill.
FEMA would also require more regional focus and closer coordination with local State entities, as well as with our nongovernmental partners. They are the first line of response in a disaster. Our legislation bolsters the role of FEMA's regional centers by authorizing the creation of multiagency strike teams to ensure rapid and effective cooperation with first responders and public officials in disaster areas. These strike teams would comprise representatives from all of the Federal agencies that play a role in responding to the disasters. They would train and exercise with their State and local counterparts.
I was struck by the fact that during our investigation, we learned that FEMA sent officials from region I--New England--down to help out in New Orleans. Often they were the lead officials. These were trained and dedicated people, but just think how much more effective they could have been if they had been stationed in the region and working regularly with the public officials in that region and with the first responders.
We believe FEMA needs top-level access and visibility. The administrator of the new U.S. Emergency Management Authority would be designated by our bill as the principal adviser to the President on matters of emergency management and would have direct access to the President. This would establish the administrator in a capacity that is analogous to that of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition, the administrator would be authorized to communicate any recommendations, any needs and requirements directly to Congress.
Our intention to keep the strengthened FEMA as part of DHS has stirred more debate than perhaps any other of our recommendations emerging from the Katrina investigation. Some Members of this Chamber, as well as proponents of a bill introduced in the House, insist that FEMA must be extracted from the Department of Homeland Security and restored to independent status. We share the view that the actions of both FEMA and DHS officials before and during the Katrina disaster revealed troubling and, at times, shocking lapses in awareness, agility, and judgment. But we also believe that both logic and practical realities point to reform, not amputation, as the best approach to improved protection for our citizens.
Please recall that it was only 5 years ago--before the 9/11 terror attacks--that the distinguished panel chaired by two of our former colleagues, Senator Hart and Senator Rudman, recommended that America establish a single agency to plan, coordinate, and integrate homeland security operations. The Commission correctly deduced that FEMA was the ``necessary core'' of that new department, and Congress agreed. The logic of that decision stands intact. The Department of Homeland Security's mission extends to all types of hazards and to preparation and mitigation as well as to response. DHS needs FEMA's capabilities and would have to re-create many of them at great cost and with great duplication of effort if FEMA were to be removed from the Department.
Even if that re-creation could somehow be done economically--and the evidence is that it would cost billions of dollars--the result would be new problems for State and local officials who direct first responders. Bifurcated, competing preparedness systems would force State and local officials to engage one system to prepare for natural disasters and another to prepare for terrorist attacks. That does not make sense. Many of the response capabilities are exactly the same whether the catastrophe is caused by a natural disaster such as a hurricane or whether it is the result of a terrorist attack. We know planning and response capabilities are already far too weak in many States. DHS's recent survey of the States proves that. We should not make the problem worse.
For those who argue that FEMA simply cannot thrive, cannot be successful within DHS, an obvious and telling question arises: How, then, did the U.S. Coast Guard, also a unit within DHS, emerge as the universally acclaimed hero of the Katrina response? Everyone believes the Coast Guard was the stellar performer, yet the Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. So clearly FEMA's problem does not lie in its placement within DHS. Unlike FEMA, however, the Coast Guard has congressionally mandated protections, and our legislation would extend that exact same protection to FEMA's successor agency.
The temptation to think that the answer is simply to remove FEMA is strong, but it is wrong. Just as not all motion is forward, not every change is progress. Emergency management expert Professor Donald Kettl of the University of Pennsylvania put it well when he told our committee:
It is tempting to send a strong signal by pulling FEMA out of DHS. But that would only undermine its ability to accomplish its mission. Breaking these pieces apart--separating response to terrorism from response to natural disasters, separating preparedness from response, separating FEMA from DHS--would inevitably bring problems.
I would suggest these are just a few of the serious implications that severing FEMA from DHS would cause.
First, coordination and reaction time would suffer. David Paulison, the new Director of FEMA, says that he closely coordinates with the Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and the Secret Service through weekly meetings. In times of disaster, he can simply make a request to these fellow DHS units; he doesn't have to go through a bureaucratic, formal process. They are all parts of the same department.
Second, training and preparedness would suffer. ADM Thad Allen of the Coast Guard testified before the committee that having FEMA within DHS has allowed much closer working ties and a 350-percent increase in joint training exercises.
Third, DHS's mission capability would suffer. The Homeland Security Act specifies that part of DHS's mission was to act as the focal point for natural and manmade emergencies and for emergency planning. As the Comptroller General has said:
Removing FEMA from DHS might impact the ability of the department and its remaining components and FEMA itself in fully addressing the close links between preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery from all hazards.
Fourth, State and local governments would suffer. If preparedness functions for natural disasters and terrorist attacks were divided, State and local governments would have to deal with two primary points of contact, two sets of regulations, two sources of funding, and two sets of officials. It greatly complicates their tasks.
Fifth, I strongly believe that FEMA would suffer. Removed from DHS, FEMA would lose many of the working relationships I have already described as well as the direct access to the information-gathering and analysis capabilities of other DHS agencies. This would degrade FEMA's ability to plan and train for both natural and manmade disasters and to make efficient use of grant-making authority.
To me, it is clear that a strengthened--a much strengthened--FEMA still belongs in DHS, that the necessary reforms can be carried out while it remains in DHS, and that severing FEMA from DHS would create a host of new problems, resulting in considerable extra expense and duplication, without securing any significant benefits. It is worth noting that America's largest group of first responders has come to the same conclusion. The president of the 274,000-member International Association of Firefighters has written us to say:
Removing FEMA would hinder--rather than help--efforts to reform our Nation's emergency response system. Having both a DHS and an independent FEMA would create confusion among local response personnel and lead to an unproductive duplication of efforts and turf battles.
Having summarized what I see as compelling arguments for strengthening and protecting FEMA as a component of DHS, let me outline some of the key provisions of our U.S.-EMA bill.
First, the bill establishes a strong position for the Administrator of the U.S. Emergency Management Authority. Once nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the Administrator will have the standing of a Deputy Secretary, and will operate on a reporting and chain of command model like that of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Day to day, the Administrator will report to the DHS Secretary, but the bill explicitly provides a direct line of communication between the President and the Administrator during a catastrophe. In addition, the Administrator may make whatever recommendations to Congress that he or she deems appropriate.
The bill provides for directors, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, to provide the Administrator with highly qualified professionals in Preparedness and Mitigation, Response, and Recovery. Apart from bolstering the organization, authorizing these posts would send a clear signal to the Nation's Governors and mayors that they will have people of stature with whom to work and confer.
Besides providing the Administrator of U.S.-EMA with an advisory link to the President, the bill specifically tasks the Administrator with providing the federal leadership necessary to prepare for and respond to a disaster, whether man-made or natural. It gives the Administrator responsibility for administering preparedness grant programs, and for monitoring and evaluating the readiness of each of the emergency support functions under the national response plan. These are critical steps for ensuring close cooperation and oversight of preparedness at all levels of government.
The bill specifies that U.S.-EMA is a distinct entity and protects it from reorganization without explicit Congressional approval. This gives U.S.-EMA security identical to that of the Coast Guard.
Another critical element of the bill authorizes a strong regional structure for U.S.-EMA and creates regionally based federal strike teams for rapid response. This will ensure that U.S.-EMA officials are familiar with the people, the vulnerabilities, and the resources of the regions they protect, and will not be introducing themselves to strangers on unfamiliar ground when disaster strikes.
Further recognizing the importance of mult-level government coordination, the bill creates a national advisory council on emergency preparedness and response--made up of State and local officials and emergency management professionals from public, private and NGO sectors--to advise the Administrator of U.S.-EMA.
Our bill provides a statutory basis for chief medical officer to advise the DHS Secretary on medical and public-health issues. Other sections promote public and community preparedness; evaluate the effectiveness of equipment for first responders; reauthorize and expand the emergency management assistance compact; and create an office of terrorism prevention at DHS.
Mr. President, the U.S. Emergency Management Authority Act is not a symbolic gesture, or a quick fix for our problems. It is a thoroughly researched, carefully drafted collection of reforms that will lay the foundation for years of hard work.
The result, we firmly believe, will be a significantly more effective national system of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery against natural disasters and terror attacks. Building on the insights of the Hart-Rudman Commission and on the important advances embodied in the Homeland Security Act, the U.S.-EMA bill will greatly improve the protections that American citizens need, and deserve.
Mr. President, my statement has outlined the reforms we are making to this new agency. They are considerable. They are going to make a real difference, and I hope we can pass legislation before the end of this year to greatly strengthen and improve FEMA and our emergency response system and preparedness on all levels of government.
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