Barbara Mikulski: “I rise to support the Bond-Mikulski amendment and also to oppose the second-degree amendment offered by our colleague…”

“I rise to support the Bond-Mikulski amendment and also to oppose the second-degree amendment offered by our colleague from Oklahoma. Mr. President, I want to support my colleague from Missouri, the chairman of the subcommittee on appropriations for FEMA, Senator Bond, in his remarks about the need for the reform on the funding of FEMA. Now, Mr. President, let me take a few minutes to say that during the last 5 years FEMA has reformed itself. Prior to James Lee Witt becoming the Administrator, FEMA itself in the way it responded to disasters was a disaster. Each President--Mr. Reagan and then Mr. Bush--often had to send in a trusted aide to oversee whenever disaster affected a community because FEMA itself was so obsessed with a bunker, cold war, civil defense, hide-under-your-desk mentality for nuclear warfare, that it had not gone to a risk-based strategy to be able to respond to the disasters that America faced. When Hurricane Andrew so devastated Florida that the response of FEMA itself was a disaster, President Bush sent the very able and talented Secretary of Transportation, Mr. Card, to Florida because FEMA could not get it together to do the job. I think we are all agreed that now FEMA has moved into being an appropriate agency for the post-cold war era. It has focused on the domestic needs of the American people.”