[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 119 (Thursday, July 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4316-S4317]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WELCH:

[[Page S4316]]

  S. 2247. A bill to enhance local capacity and expand local control 
over the disaster response, recovery, and preparedness process, to 
guarantee stable Federal funding streams for disaster-impacted 
communities, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, exactly 2 years ago today, Vermont was 
struck with devastating floods. Those floods occurred not only a year 
ago today, but 2 years ago today. We had back-to-back floods in 2023 
and 2024, doing about a billion dollars' worth of damage.
  And by the end of last year, every county in Vermont, all 14 
counties, were hit by flooding. That billion dollars in damages 
affected homes; it affected businesses; it affected farms.
  We had 6,000 tons of debris that was removed, 77 State bridges and 63 
State roads were closed; 704 miles of rail was closed, and 159 miles of 
rail trail was closed.
  We are far from alone in Vermont in having suffered enormous damage 
from wild weather events. And I see my colleague from Texas, to whom 
all of us extend our heartfelt sorrow and condolences at the flooding 
in Texas and the loss of lives of those wonderful Texans and those 
kids.
  This type of wild weather event can hit any one of our States at any 
time of its own choosing. And all of our States have been affected at 
one time or another.
  Now, I want to talk about FEMA. Our experience in Vermont with FEMA 
is that it is absolutely essential and actually quite helpful in the 
immediate aftermath of the weather event.
  FEMA can preposition resources. It has the capacity to surge 
resources and personnel, including people with real experience, and can 
coordinate with the local response, which is always very intense, from 
State resources and also from incredible outpouring of help from 
volunteers.
  But acknowledging the importance of FEMA in the immediate aftermath 
of a wild weather event in any of our States cannot disregard the fact 
that we need to reform FEMA. We need significant reform in FEMA.
  In the aftermath of the floods of 2023 and 2024, I visited all of our 
communities that were affected, and I followed up after that to talk to 
our local officials, our local volunteers, our local regional planning 
commissions: What worked and what didn't in the long-term response?
  And what I heard from officials--regardless of what their political 
orientation was but local officials who had a real sense of urgency 
about getting the community back on its feet--was that FEMA was too 
slow; it was too bureaucratic; it was conflicting in the advice and 
information that it gave. And the ability to respond quickly and timely 
was really inhibited because of the centralization of the decision-
making authority in FEMA in Washington or in one of the regional 
locations where FEMA has administrative structures. For Vermont that, 
ironically, is Puerto Rico, which is not only not close to Vermont but 
doesn't have anything close to the weather in Vermont.
  So the aftermath of repairing, getting the community back on its 
feet--that is where FEMA has failed us. It is because of the 
centralization, in my view--actually, less important than my view--in 
the view of the local officials who have ongoing responsibility to get 
the community back on its feet. They just couldn't get answers.
  Let me just give some examples. When there is a culvert out, there is 
a road out, there is a bridge down, the people whose bridge is 
affected, the people who are threatened if we have a culvert replaced 
that is too small for what now we know will be the required carrying 
capacity of a culvert, the best people to make that are right there in 
that community. They have a sense of urgency. They have a commitment to 
the well-being of the people they represent in that community. They 
have the pressure of local community people watching to see if they are 
making progress on that recovery.
  But what has happened with FEMA, where everything is centralized, is 
you don't get an answer. Can we replace an 18-inch culvert with a 36-
inch culvert? Can we do the bridge over Hartland Road? Or can we make a 
change because the bridge over Route 5 is more important to get fixed 
and that is the priority?
  One of the problems that our communities had is that the program 
managers--those are the people assigned by FEMA to serve communities as 
the bridge between the local community and FEMA--they are changed 
constantly. So we have had in some of our small towns--and I am talking 
towns with a population of like 300--they have one program manager 
after another and over the course of a year and a half might have seven 
or eight program managers. When that program manager is doing good work 
and asking questions and they are getting answers from the town clerk, 
the new program manager comes in, and it is as though nothing ever 
happened, and they have to start all over again. So it creates an 
enormous amount of frustration.
  We have a situation with the town of Stannard where the town clerk--
this is the town of 300--the town had to make a decision about repaving 
a road. It is a gravel surface. In order to get repaved more than a 
year after the road had been repaired, with the town borrowing money it 
really couldn't afford for a project that clearly was ultimately going 
to be covered by FEMA, the town clerk was getting questions about, what 
is the size of the gravel stones in that roadbed 12 inches down? That 
makes no sense. And what happens, of course, is it creates an immense 
amount of frustration.
  A community that goes through a major weather event, in the shock of 
it, in the immediate aftermath, everyone rushes in to help. But if it 
is your farm, if it is your business, if it is your home, you have to 
live with the effects of a slow-moving, nonresponsive, centralized 
bureaucracy rather than get on with life and get an answer. Yes or no? 
Can you do this or not?
  So as a result of my discussions with the communities that have been 
affected in Vermont, today, I have introduced a bill that is called the 
Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization, AID, Act. Quite 
simply, what this bill does is it recognizes that if you are going to 
get as quick a recovery as possible, as efficient a recovery as 
possible, as cost-effective a recovery as possible, you actually have 
to delegate responsibility and authority to the local community that 
has to live with the consequences of the damage that has been done. 
There has to be a partnership. There has to be accountability.
  But where FEMA's role is going to be better on this is on oversight 
to make sure that there is the proper use of taxpayer, FEMA-authorized 
money. But it is not going to micromanage local folks to death in the 
name of oversight; it is going to empower the local folks to make those 
decisions that have to be made right now about getting that community 
back on its feet.
  Every single one of us is horrified when the people we represent 
suffer the result of a wild and catastrophic weather event. The loss of 
life is horrifying. The destruction to the well-being of the community 
is inconsolable. But we can help by making that long-term recovery 
process work better, and the only way it is really going to work better 
is by having much more authority in local hands--the decisions that 
they can make about the culvert, about the bridge, about the grade of 
gravel that goes into the repairs.
  So my hope is that we can come together as a Congress to fix FEMA so 
that its capacity to help our communities when they have been hurt so 
hard through no fault of their own--that they will be able to get the 
capacity to make decisions, act, and get their community back on its 
feet.
  Now, I do oppose this discussion that we are had hearing to some 
extent from President Trump and Secretary Noem about abolishing FEMA. 
You know, we can abolish FEMA when we can get an Executive order 
abolishing and banning wild weather events, but that day is not going 
to come. But another storm in one of our communities inevitably will 
come.
  What I want us to do, for your State and mine, is to have a FEMA that 
can be on hand, prepositioned, and help in the immediate aftermath and 
then be a partner but where we put the decision making and the capacity 
to act and the flexibility that is necessary for the wise recovery of 
our communities in the hands of our local officials. I think this will 
make a much better recovery process for the folks all of us represent 
in the great United States of America.

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