Chairman Graves Opening Statement from Hearing on the Need to Improve Federal Disaster Assistance and FEMA

Washington, D.C. - Opening remarks, as prepared, of Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) from today's hearing, entitled "Reforming FEMA: Ensuring the Nation's Disaster Readiness Works for Americans":

Last year, I, alongside Ranking Member Larsen, started down the path of examining how we can fix the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. Around the same time, President Trump issued an Executive Order creating the FEMA Review Council to develop recommendations on reforming FEMA. What everyone seems to agree on is that FEMA is broken and has been for a long time.

As communities impacted by disasters across this nation know, the federal emergency management system needs fundamental change to reduce lives lost, speed up recovery, and lower costs for the taxpayer. For decades now, we thought if we just made certain changes here and there, the process would get better.

In 2006, we passed the post-Katrina reforms. Then we passed the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act in 2013, and later the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018. This doesn't even count the bills we've passed targeting specific issues, such as bills I authored to protect disaster victims from FEMA errors and to speed up smaller rebuilding projects.

We have passed reform after reform since FEMA was put into DHS and what was the result? We have thousands of open disaster projects dating back to Hurricane Katrina, ballooning disaster costs, a bureaucracy that feels like you need a Ph.D. to navigate, and little common sense.

Any Member who has had to help constituents navigate FEMA knows how complicated the agency can be. FEMA is supposed to lead the federal government's preparedness for, mitigation against, response to, and recovery from disasters. Given this mission, it should be the nimblest federal agency. But instead, it continues to be swallowed by the weight of its own red tape, regulations, and bureaucracy.

Don't get me wrong - there are good people at FEMA who want the system to work, but we need to make sure they have the tools to be as effective as possible.

Last May, Ranking Member Larsen and I released a discussion draft of the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act, or FEMA Act. The Committee met with and received input from over 150 stakeholders, representing state and local governments, emergency managers, nonprofits, key industries, disaster victims, and other experts and stakeholders. We have received input from Members from both sides of the aisle and on and off this Committee representing communities impacted by disasters.

As a result, in July of last year, we officially introduced the FEMA Act, incorporating the input we received and, in September, ordered the bill, as amended, reported favorably to the House.

More recently, in May of this year, the President's FEMA Review Council completed its work. Not surprisingly, while there are some differences, the goals and many of the approaches in those recommendations mirror the FEMA Act. For example, we all agree reforms must be focused on a system that is state led, locally executed, and federally supported.

I have said that from day one. We all agree FEMA's reimbursement process for rebuilding is inherently flawed, and so moving to upfront grants will not only speed things up but reduce costs. Further, we all agree that investment in mitigation is critical, so we must ensure funding and projects move faster. And we are in agreement that the current way of providing assistance to disaster victims has to be reformed to make more sense.

Now that the FEMA Review Council's recommendations have been released, we hope we can move forward with passing the FEMA Act.

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