WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- Senior House Republicans will unveil a controversial proposal Tuesday to move the Federal Emergency Management Agency out of the Department of Homeland Security, restoring it to the independent, Cabinet-level status it had before being merged into the new department.
With hurricane season looming, the proposal sets the stage for a three-way battle with the Senate, where lawmakers are pushing a rival plan to break up the agency and reformulate its functions within the huge department, and with the administration and its supporters on the House Committee on Homeland Security, who oppose moving FEMA.
"As many emergency management professionals warned, it was a mistake to put FEMA in (homeland security)," Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the powerful House Committee on Government Reform, wrote in a Washington Times op-ed Monday.
Davis, who chaired the House committee which probed the flawed response to last year's devastating Hurricane Katrina, will join with Democrats and Republicans from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Tuesday to unveil the reform package.
Reps. Don Young, R-Alaska, the chairman of transportation and infrastructure; his Democratic opposite number, James Oberstar, D-Minn.; and emergency management sub-committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Penn., are all long-time supporters of moving FEMA out of homeland security, but Davis has not previously declared his position on the issue.
Demands that FEMA be pulled out of the department resurfaced after the agency's disastrous performance in responding to Hurricane Katrina, which left thousands of people, overwhelmingly poor and mostly black, trapped in flooded and devastated New Orleans.
Critics said merging the agency into homeland security had, in the words of one Washington State emergency management official, "buried it in the bowels of the department."
As a senior House chairman, and as one of the GOP's top congressional fundraisers, Davis enjoys a lot of clout, especially in an election year, and his decision to throw his lot in with reformers who want to restore FEMA's independence adds considerable weight to their long-standing demand.
Davis' Communications Director Robert White told United Press International Monday that the evidence amassed during his inquiry eventually convinced the chairman "that there is a compelling case the agency would be better off as a truly independent entity, with a Cabinet-level director who has the ear of the president and can mobilize the entire resources of the federal government with a single phone call."
White added however, that Davis was concerned there be no re-organization until after the hurricane season was safely over. "It would be detrimental (for FEMA) to have to go through a re-organization in the middle of hurricane season," he said.
White said there was no definite timetable for the bill as yet, but expected hearings later this year.
By contrast, a staffer on the House Committee on Homeland Security told UPI that Chairman Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., hoped to mark his alternative bill up either this week or next, so that it could get to the floor -- if time was found by the leadership -- before the May recess.
Other committee staffers were working hard on successive drafts of the bill last week and over the weekend -- sharing their work with more than a score of first responder groups and soliciting feedback in order to try and secure their support for the bill, according to one person who was consulted.
The staffer said the King bill contained provisions, which, "if it was passed into law (before the congressional recess at the end of May), could be put in place before the hurricane season."
No bill, even if passed by the House, can become law unless it also passes the Senate -- where legislation is harder to consider without lengthy debate and numerous amendments, and which has a full plate for the remainder of the month already.
The King bill would restructure FEMA as a new "Directorate of Emergency Management," within the department, that would combine the agency with homeland security's current Directorate of Preparedness.
Echoing the proposal floated by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the King bill would also promote the head of FEMA to an undersecretary position from his current place as assistant secretary, but make him report directly to the president in times of national emergency.
Davis criticized that proposal, calling it "a clumsy attempt to straddle the fundamental issue" of whether the agency should be inside the department or independent. The compromise was "not Solomonic, but merely indecisive," said Davis, adding that "cutting this baby in half will not make it work any better."
In a nod to critics who say that FEMA was unable to protect its own budget inside the department, the King bill also contains a provision that seeks to prevent the agency's funds from being reprogrammed without notice to congress.
When the Department of Homeland Security was formed from 22 agencies in the largest government reorganization for half a century, two of them got special treatment. The U.S. Coast Guard and the Secret Service were both "ring-fenced," as their supporters called it, so that neither their budget nor their mission could be tampered with by the department-level leadership.
FEMA supporters tried to get the same protection for that agency, but failed.
By contrast, the King provision only requires that the homeland security secretary inform congress of any proposal to reprogram funds or make other changes to the new directorate.
