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A duo of bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives is proposing a bill that would establish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as an independent, cabinet-level agency that would be broken away from its current home inside the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“The FEMA Independence Act,” sponsored by Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D) and co-sponsored with his state colleague Rep. Byron Donalds (R), would break FEMA out of DHS and establish a cabinet secretary that would report directly to the president.
This comes after a Monday meeting of the president’s cabinet where, according to reporting at Semafor, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said “we’re going to eliminate FEMA.”
The agency, however, is authorized via statute by Congress, so it is unclear how much unilateral authority the administration has to unwind it.
Moskowitz, who formerly managed emergency response in Florida, cited the growing prevalence of natural disasters as a need to break it away from the “bureaucracy” of DHS.
“As these emergencies continue to grow larger and more widespread, the American people deserve a federal response that is efficient and fast. To achieve that, FEMA should be reformed,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “FEMA currently sits under the bureaucracy of [DHS] — and with around 20 other agencies and offices under that umbrella, the set-up simply doesn’t work. DHS has become too big and too slow to oversee what needs to be a quick and flexible emergency response.”
Donalds also released a statement saying FEMA had become “overly-bureaucratic, overly-politicized [and] overly-inefficient,” contending that establishing it as an independent agency would improve all of these fronts.
“When disaster strikes, quick and effective action must be the standard—not the exception,” Donalds said. “It is imperative that FEMA is removed from the bureaucratic labyrinth of DHS and instead is designated to report directly to the President of the United States.”
If passed, the bill would change the leadership processes for the agency. Currently, only the FEMA administrator and deputy are required to go through the Senate confirmation process, but this bill would establish rules for a Senate-confirmed director and up to four deputy directors.
The bill would also maintain the agency’s existing 10 regional offices and establish an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for oversight, and the director would be given latitude to choose a regional director to occupy each of those offices.
