[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 25, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8197-S8199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. COLLINS (for herself, Mr. Lieberman, and Mr. Salazar):
  S. 3721. A bill to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to 
establish the United States Emergency Management Authority, and for 
other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to introduce S. 3721, the Post-
Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. It contains a vital 
set of reforms and innovations for our emergency-management systems 
that are designed to save lives and ease suffering when disaster 
strikes. The crafting of this bill has benefited from the insights of 
my principal cosponsor, Senator Lieberman, and from the support of our 
other cosponsor, Senator Salazar.
  The Senate has already acted on one critical measure to apply the 
bitter lessons of Hurricane Katrina. The 87 to 11 vote on July 11, 
adding creation of the U.S. Emergency Management Authority to the 
Homeland Security appropriations bill, adopted a major element of 
today's bill. That was a great step forward.
  The Senate Homeland Security Committee conducted an 8-month 
investigation with 23 hearings, more than 325 formal interviews, and a 
review of more than 838,000 pages of documents to ascertain why the 
response to Hurricane Katrina was so inadequate at all levels of 
government. The investigation revealed serious failures of leadership. 
It also revealed an urgent need for broad reforms ranging from 
communication-technology standards to the structure and missions of 
entire Federal agencies.
  Some of the 88 recommendations that flowed from our investigation can 
be adopted by administrative action. The Post-Katrina Emergency 
Management Reform Act comprises important steps that only Congress can 
take. I will outline the five key components of our bill.
  First, we strengthen FEMA and rename it as the United State Emergency 
Management Authority, or US-EMA, to signify a fresh start. We elevate 
US-EMA within DHS, restore its preparedness authority, and protect it 
from departmental reorganizations that could erode its budget and 
assets. These measures give the agency mission and asset protections 
like those of its DHS siblings, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service.
  These statutory protections are important. Securing the integrity of 
FEMA preserves the cooperative benefits of its operating within easy 
reach of other DHS agencies. It also avoids the duplication, cost, and 
confusion for State and local officials that would come from carving 
FEMA out as a weak, stand-alone agency for natural disasters. Keeping 
FEMA where it was placed by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 avoids 
the need for DHS to recreate a similar terror-response capability.
  Improving contact and coordination among Federal, State, and local 
agencies is essential. For that reason, our bill provides for 
regionally based, multi-agency Federal strike teams that will be ready 
to act and deploy in a region they will already know and understand 
before a disaster occurs.
  The bill also provides continued funding for the interstate Emergency 
Management Assistance Compact that proved so valuable in marshaling aid 
for the gulf coast last year. It commits the US-EMA to work with States 
and localities to develop a standardized credentialing system that will 
help responders and selected private-sector personnel move quickly into 
disaster areas anywhere in the country, and it requires the US-EMA to 
offer technical assistance to State and local governments.
  To help remedy the communications gaps revealed by Hurricane Katrina, 
we also improve the agency's organizational and technical 
communications systems. Our bill designates the Administrator of the 
US-EMA as the principal advisor to the President on emergency-
management issues. Meanwhile, national and regional advisory councils 
will ensure that the US-EMA has open channels of communication with 
State and local officials, emergency responders, key private-sector and 
nongovernmental entities, and with representatives of people with 
disabilities.
  On the equally important technical side, our bill consolidates 
several communications programs within a new Office of Emergency 
Communications within US-EMA. This office will devise a national 
emergency-communications strategy, administer grants for interoperable 
communications, and regularly assess the operability and 
interoperability of the communication systems that are essential for 
disaster response and that failed so widely during the Katrina 
catastrophe.
  This US-EMA portion of the bill has received a great deal of 
attention. But it is only one part of this package of essential 
reforms.
  The second part of our bill permits an enhanced Federal role in 
emergency management when major disasters require it. The Robert T. 
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, better known as 
the Stafford Act, authorizes a variety of Federal assistance measures 
to State and local governments when the President has declared a 
disaster.
  Congress has amended the Stafford Act over time to make it more 
effective. Our bill continues that process of improvement by applying 
lessons learned from Katrina.
  At the highest level, it directs the Federal Government to develop 
and maintain a national disaster-recovery strategy in coordination with 
the State and local governments which will lead each recovery. This 
fills a remarkable planning void in our current system, which focuses 
on response. When disaster overwhelms state and local governments and 
devastates large areas, recovery can be a long process requiring 
extended Federal assistance.

  We increase the potential for more effective Federal aid in several 
ways. For example, the legislation enhances Federal agencies' ability 
to respond when the President uses his authority to direct their 
assistance in major-disaster response and recovery.
  The bill requires a national-disaster housing strategy and authorizes 
making semipermanent housing units a part of Stafford Act assistance. 
In many cases, the modular ``Katrina cottages,'' for example, would be 
less costly, safer, more livable, more easily sited, and more durable 
than the notorious trailers FEMA purchased.
  A new title VII for the Stafford Act gives the President discretion 
to offer increased Federal assistance when disaster overwhelms state 
and local governments. This discretionary--but limited--authority for 
catastrophes includes raising the cap on individual assistance, 
assisting victims with rent or mortgage costs, extending disaster-
unemployment benefits, increasing community loans, and raising the 
reimbursement to communities for the cost of food, clothes, and other 
essential goods they distribute to victims.

[[Page S8198]]

  Among other Stafford Act revisions, our bill clarifies that Federal 
mitigation efforts can extend to man-made hazards like the Mississippi 
River Gulf Outlet that funneled deadly storm-surge waters toward New 
Orleans. It establishes a missing-child location system and a database 
to help reunite families, a major problem in the aftermath of Katrina. 
And it requires that planning and training exercises, as well as 
evacuation and sheltering plans, give consideration to people with 
disabilities or special needs, or who are not fluent in English, or who 
have pets.
  These improvements to the Stafford Act would be a major 
accomplishment by themselves. But the demonstrated need for reforms 
goes deeper still.
  The third key element of our bill will provide more and better-
trained emergency professionals. The US-EMA will establish a 
contingency cadre to meet surge workforce needs; implement a human-
capital strategy to improve recruitment, development, and retention; 
and make quarterly reports to Congress on staffing levels. These 
actions should reduce the chronic workforce shortfalls--at times as 
great as 25 percent--that have hobbled FEMA in the past.
  Looking to staffing quality across the full spectrum, our bill 
creates a National Homeland Security Academy. The academy will offer 
both classroom and distance-learning instruction and training to DHS, 
state, and local homeland-security professionals.
  The fourth element in our reform bill will correct the confusion and 
lack of training on incident management and unified-command operations 
that frustrated a fully effective response to Katrina. Our bill 
mandates a comprehensive review of the National Response Plan, and 
requires that the DHS Secretary employ the NRP and the National 
Incident Management System to guide Federal actions in a natural or 
manmade disaster.
  The Secretary is also directed to work with the US-EMA Administrator 
and with the National Advisory Committee to implement a national 
training-and-exercise program to ensure that vital knowledge and skills 
are in place and are kept sharp.
  The fifth key aspect of our bill targets the waste, fraud, and abuse 
that outraged both our compassion for disaster victims and our sense of 
stewardship for taxpayer dollars. Based on the investigations by our 
committee, the GAO, and the DHS inspector general, I believe far more 
than a billion dollars has been lost to waste, fraud, and abuse in the 
aftermath of Katrina. The purchase of unusable mobile homes, long-
distance moving and storage of unneeded ice, and abuse of debit cards 
indicate that DHS has lacked even rudimentary controls to safeguard tax 
dollars.
  Our bill directs the Department to identify emergency-response 
requirements that can be contracted in advance with pre-screened 
vendors, so that vital commodities and services can be secured and 
delivered promptly. This simple change could curtail the waste of time 
and money as officials scramble to make ad-hoc purchase and 
distribution arrangements, often paying excessive prices. We also 
provide for a contingency corps of Federal contracting officers who can 
work in the field for an extended period following a disaster, so that 
response and recovery spending is better directed and controlled than 
with Katrina.
  Our bill also faces the unfortunate reality that thieves and con 
artists will try to abuse even programs for disaster victims. Our bill 
imposes civil and criminal penalties for misrepresentation, requires 
fraud-awareness training for contracting officers and for the relief 
workforce, mandates systems to verify identities and addresses, and 
requires issuing explicit directions on legitimate uses of purchase 
cards.
  Our bill is no single-issue, silver-bullet exercise but a careful and 
comprehensive program of improvement and innovation. It takes on each 
of the vital areas that our Hurricane Katrina investigation determined 
require action by Congress: reconstituting FEMA, updating and expanding 
the Stafford Act, improving emergency staffing, enhancing planning and 
preparedness, and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse.
  Floods, earthquakes, storms, fires, and other natural disasters are 
abiding threats that exempt no one living on this planet. And the 
threat of manmade disasters has, perhaps permanently, forced itself 
into our plans for sustaining this great Nation.
  Hurricane Katrina showed us in tragic terms that our mechanisms for 
disaster mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery urgently need 
many improvements. If we leave untouched the gaps, the confusions, and 
the missteps revealed during Katrina, we will see more unnecessary loss 
of life and prolonged misery. We do not know when the next great 
disaster will strike, or what form it will take. But we know it will 
come. We know what needs to be done. The Post-Katrina Emergency 
Management Reform Act gives us the tools to do it.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my support for 
and cosponsorship of this comprehensive piece of legislation that 
Chairman Collins and I are proposing based on our investigation into 
the failed preparations and response to Hurricane Katrina.
  About 1 month ago, we introduced a bill to transform FEMA into the 
U.S. Emergency Management Authority to guarantee that our national 
emergency response system can handle a catastrophe--whether it is a 
hurricane the size and scope of Katrina or a terrorist attack. U.S. EMA 
would have special, protected status--much like the Coast Guard has 
within the Department of Homeland Security. The Senate overwhelmingly 
adopted that legislation by a vote of 87 to 11 as part of the 
Department of Homeland Security fiscal year 2007 Appropriations Act.
  Today, we reintroduce that legislation backed up by additional 
reforms to improve emergency communications, planning, training, and to 
make necessary changes to the Stafford Act, which governs relief and 
emergency assistance to victims of disasters.
  The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, at the 
request of the Senate leadership, spent 7 months culling through 
hundreds of thousands of documents, interviewing hundreds of witnesses, 
and holding scores of hearings into the botched Government response to 
that catastrophic hurricane.
  We found that at all levels, our Government was ill-equipped to deal 
with the massive human suffering all along the gulf coast that followed 
the storm's landfall, suffering that shocked and angered the American 
people who expect more from their government when fellow Americans are 
in need. These failings were the result of many things--negligence, 
lack of resources, lack of capability. But most of all they were the 
result of a failure of leadership--by the White House, DHS, FEMA, the 
Louisiana Governor's office, and the New Orleans mayor's office.
  To this day, the Department of Homeland Security does not make 
sufficient distinction between everyday problems that States must deal 
with on a seasonal basis and the larger catastrophes which, as Katrina 
demonstrated, quickly overwhelm local and State authorities.
  The legislation we are introducing today is an effort to get the 
Department of Homeland Security to understand that distinction better 
and to target its preparedness and response to cope better with normal 
disasters as well as with those rarer but truly catastrophic events. It 
addresses--to the extent possible--many of the Federal shortcomings 
exposed by our investigation. And it reflects many of the 88 
recommendations the committee reached in its final report on the 
Katrina investigation.
  Let me briefly summarize the bill. First and foremost, we are 
concerned about our first responders who rush into the middle of 
catastrophes to save lives. First responders must have the tools they 
need to protect and save our communities. Think back to September 11. 
Hundreds of firefighters lost their lives that day for many reasons. 
Among them was that their radio equipment was not compatible with the 
police force radios, making it more difficult to learn of the warnings 
others had that the Twin Towers were going to fall.
  During Hurricane Katrina, first responders not only lacked compatible 
radio equipment, but they lost communication completely when power 
lines and sub stations were knocked out of operation.
  Whether responding to a terrorist attack, natural disaster, fire, a 
missing

[[Page S8199]]

child, or a fleeing suspect, police, firefighters, emergency medical 
technicians, and other responders too frequently cannot share crucial, 
lifesaving information at the scene of a disaster.
  Senator Collins and I introduced a bill, reported out of committee 
last year, to improve emergency communications, the Assure Emergency 
and Interoperable Communications for First Responders Act of 2005, 
S.1725. We have borrowed liberally from it. For example, today's 
legislation, like S.1725, would require the development of a national 
strategy for emergency communications; the establishment of an 
emergency communications research and development program; and 
dedicated funding for State and local communications and 
interoperability grants, authorized at $3.3 billion over 5 years.
  We would also establish a new Office of Emergency Communications 
within U.S. EMA by combining existing offices at the Department of 
Homeland Security that deal with various aspects of emergency 
communications. Among the offices to be combined are SAFECOM within the 
Science and Technology Directorate and the National Communications 
System, which was under the Infrastructure Protection Office during 
Katrina. This office will make sure that DHS actually has someone in 
charge of leading the Department's splintered efforts to fix these 
persistent communications problems.
  This legislation also makes changes to the Stafford Act and improves 
upon other recovery and assistance benefits for the victims of 
disaster. Among other things, we would require U.S. EMA to develop 
housing and recovery strategies; we would increase the assistance 
provided under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program from 7.5 percent of 
funds paid out under title IV of the Stafford Act up to 15 percent, 
depending on the size of the disaster; and we would expand FEMA's 
authority so that in addition to providing temporary housing it could 
provide permanent or semipermanent housing, giving it greater 
flexibility to meet the needs of those affected by a disaster. Unlike 
FEMA, U.S. EMA would not have to reflexively rely on travel trailers to 
house victims when other types of housing make more sense.

  Victims would be aided further under this legislation by elimination 
of the subcaps that limited the amount of specific assistance for 
repairs and home replacement during Katrina and by increased 
transportation benefits. We would clarify the statute by reinforcing 
Congress's intent to allow for the use of rental assistance to pay for 
utility costs and to provide treatment of mental health problems 
resulting from or aggravated by a disaster. And we would allow U.S. EMA 
to provide temporary residences to all parts of a household that 
necessarily must split following a disaster--because of multiple 
relocations or cases of domestic violence, for example.
  If the President finds ``catastrophic damages'' to a locale hit by 
disaster, he would be able to provide even more assistance under our 
legislation. The President would be able to double the cap for 
individual assistance from $26,000 to $52,000, provide unemployment 
benefits for 52 weeks instead of 26 weeks, provide help with mortgage 
and rental assistance, and waive maximum limitations on the amount of 
assistance that can be provided under the Community Disaster Loan 
Program.
  Other provisions in our bill call for increased planning for people 
with special needs, better ways to get disaster information to those 
who need it, and measures to assist with family reunification. We would 
also require government contractors to hire more local firms and local 
workers.
  This legislation also has an extensive section dedicated to saving 
money for the taxpayers while preventing waste, fraud, and abuse. For 
example, we would require the U.S. EMA Director to establish an 
identity verification process to ensure that victims who apply for 
benefits under the Individuals and Households Program are who they say 
they are and are in true need. We would create a registry of 
contractors able to perform common postdisaster work and use advance, 
competitively awarded contracts for predictably required goods and 
services. And we would create a contingent of volunteer contracting 
officers from throughout the Federal Government to assist with 
additional contracting needs during emergencies.
  Our bill would also require U.S. EMA to plan for a disaster far more 
extensively than it has previously. It requires the development of a 
national training and exercise program, involving both Federal and 
State officials, to prepare for natural and manmade disasters. And the 
U.S. EMA Administrator would have to review the National Response Plan 
and clarify overlapping or confusing law enforcement, search and 
rescue, and medical responsibilities.
  Mr. President, we are approaching the 1-year anniversary of Katrina--
August 29. Much has changed since that time. Certainly, the gulf coast 
is better prepared to meet a disaster this hurricane season. Yet many 
victimized by Hurricane Katrina, as well as those vulnerable to natural 
disasters or terrorist attacks elsewhere, still face uncertain futures.
  We cannot forget those still struggling to rebuild their lives from 
the devastation wrought by Katrina almost a year ago. This legislation 
was designed to address specific problems exposed by Katrina, so as it 
moves through the legislative process, we must do all that we can to 
ensure that the President has the authority he needs to provide 
assistance to past victims, as well as to victims of future disasters. 
We must also make certain that, unlike FEMA, U.S. EMA has all of the 
resources it needs to lead a national preparedness effort and to 
respond to whatever occurs in a manner that the American people have a 
right to expect.
  The committee's investigation found that FEMA had never been prepared 
for a catastrophic event but also that it had budget shortages that 
hindered its preparedness and impeded its performance. Scott Wells, 
FEMA's Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer in Lousiana, summed it up. 
He said, ``This was a catastrophic disaster. We don't have the 
structure; we don't have the people for catastrophic disaster. It's 
that simple . . . If you want a big capability, you've got to make a 
big investment. And there is no investment in response operations for a 
catastrophic disaster. It's not there.''
  Clearly, if the Federal Government is to improve its performance in 
the next disaster, we must give it sufficient resources. This 
legislation takes an important step in that direction by providing a 
$49 million increase for FEMA's two key operating accounts in fiscal 
year 2008 and an additional $53 million in fiscal year 2009. However, I 
believe even more is necessary, and I will work to secure additional 
resources as U.S. EMA becomes a reality.
  The Department of Homeland Security was established not to address 
average disasters--the hurricanes that reliably strike certain parts of 
the country each year or flooding from heavy rains. DHS was established 
to prevent, prepare for, and if necessary respond to horrific 
catastrophes that demand all the resources our Federal Government has 
to offer in times of need or when local and State governments are 
overwhelmed by what has befallen them.
  This legislation is a reminder of that original purpose, an effort to 
get the Department of Homeland Security back to where Congress 
originally envisioned it should be. This bill will help the Department 
be as prepared for and able to respond to catastrophes as the American 
public expects it to be.
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