WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) -- Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are backing rival bills on FEMA reform.
Senior Republicans are racing to introduce their bills, each purporting to lay out the best way to change the troubled Federal Emergency Management Agency but none apparently having a solid majority of votes, CongressDaily reported Wednesday.
The dispute is pitting powerful committee chairmen in the House against each other in a jurisdictional tug-of-war, with lawmakers vowing to bring their FEMA measures to the full House as soon as they can, and possibly before the Memorial Day recess, the report said.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, and House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., introduced a bill late Tuesday that would remove FEMA from the Homeland Security Department and make it an independent Cabinet-level agency under the control of the White House.
The bill is supported by House Transportation and Infrastructure ranking member James Oberstar, D-Minn.; Transportation and Infrastructure Economic Development Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa.; and Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., a senior member of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, CongressDaily said.
Shuster said the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the bill next week and that House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wants to have it on the House floor the following week. "I think if we move this to the floor, we'll get 300 votes," Davis predicted.
However, senior members of the House Homeland Security Committee plan to introduce a bill this week or early next week that would turn FEMA into a new Directorate of Emergency Management, but keep it within Homeland Security, the report said.
