[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19645-19646]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  FEMA

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman who went before 
me: we should see the best of human nature and we should all join 
together, and hopefully Congress and the administration can do better 
in the relief and the rebuilding efforts than they did in the 
prevention and disaster response.
  But it is a time to learn and reform because it may only be days or 
weeks until we have another devastating hurricane, who knows when the 
terrorists will attack, and have we learned any lessons since 9/11.

[[Page 19646]]

  A gentleman before me said we will never forget. We have forgotten. 
There were no interoperable secure communications. They want to blame 
New Orleans for that. Guess what, the Bush administration zeroed out 
interoperable communications in the Homeland Security budget. The Bush 
administration insisted that FEMA had to go into Homeland Security. I 
joined with 163 Members of this House saying no, that will degrade 
FEMA. FEMA has been degraded. They have a political hack as their head.
  Changes need to be made now, and urgently, because the next disaster 
may strike tomorrow. And if the response is as poor as it was in this 
emergency, more people will die needlessly.

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