WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senator Susan Collins, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, today issued the following statement after the Administration signaled its opposition to a recommendation by Senator Collins and Ranking Member Joseph Lieberman to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and replace it with a new agency called the National Preparedness and Response Authority (NPRA).
“We recognize that our recommendations will not be enacted in the next five weeks, before the next hurricane season begins. But we can not stay with the same deeply flawed system that has proven that it simply does not work,” said Senator Collins. “In its own Katrina report, the White House called for a number of reorganizations and changes to this dysfunctional agency. We need a long-term solution. We need to build an agency that will be significantly stronger, led by a director with a direct line of access to the President, and most important, we need to rebuild the American public’s faith in an agency that is so critical in times of disaster whether natural or man-made.”
The recommendation to abolish FEMA is just one of 86 recommendations Senators Collins and Lieberman released today following an extensive eight-month investigation in which the Committee conducted formal interviews with more than 325 witnesses, reviewed more than 838,000 pages of documentation, and held 22 public hearings. This wholly bipartisan 737-page report, details 86 specific findings on the mistakes made throughout the course of Hurricane Katrina, and offers 185 systemic and structural changes to ensure that these failures are not repeated.