Political Quotes

“I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Chairman Carter for putting together a bill that supports communities' ability to prepare for natural disasters in this very difficult fiscal environment. As chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over FEMA, I want to thank them for including all three of my committee recommendations in the bill: Thank you for continuing the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program, which saves money in future disaster assistance; Thank you for preserving the FEMA administrator's authority for directing Federal disaster response by limiting the role of the principal Federal official; Finally, thank you for funding the Emergency Management Performance Grants, or EMPG. With a 50 percent match requirement, EMPG grants leverage twice as many preparedness dollars as any other Federal program. For 60 years, EMPG has been focused on building local and State emergency management capability. There are plenty of programs that buy equipment and other things, but they won't do much good in a major disaster without qualified local emergency managers. We have all seen the photos of evacuation buses flooded and useless in New Orleans because they didn't have a good hurricane evacuation plan. Emergency managers develop the plans to get people out of harm's way and to bring help from outside to the disaster area.…”