David Obey: “last week I returned to Washington along with about 20 other Members of the House in order to assure passage of the…”

“last week I returned to Washington along with about 20 other Members of the House in order to assure passage of the initial down payment of $10 billion for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Today we will be voting to provide $52 billion more in aid. I am all for it. We will all vote for it. Any suggestion in any way that the delivery of that money would be delayed is pure nonsense. That money will be voted today. But the problem we have is that the bill is being brought to the floor in a manner which prevents Congress from exercising any independent judgment whatsoever about how best to use taxpayers' money. And the problem is that the agency that we are appropriating most of the money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional; and there are a number of reasons for that. The problem we have with FEMA is that what was an efficient, professional and qualified agency under James Witt during the Clinton administration has now once again become a dumping ground for political cronies. Three years ago this Congress in the wake of 9/11 merged FEMA into a huge, new, gargantuan agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Since that time the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security all together have squeezed the resources available for FEMA. They have hollowed out that agency and they have cut more than 500 people out of that agency.…”