WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- U.S. House of Representatives panels remain deadlocked on plans to reform the troubled FEMA disaster relief agency.
Efforts by the House Homeland Security Committee and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to broker a consensus on how to change the nation's emergency management system so far have been unsuccessful, with House Republican leaders unwilling to endorse either of the competing bills written by the panels, CongressDaily reported this week.
"We met once last week. We're going to meet again this week. We're trying to find common ground," said an aide involved in the talks. The major sticking point in the negotiations is what should be done with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, congressional aides told CongressDaily.
The Homeland Security Committee's bill would combine FEMA and other agencies into a new directorate, but leave it within the Homeland Security Department. The Transportation Committee's bill would remove FEMA from the department and make it an independent Cabinet-level agency, which it was before the department was created, the report said.
Another contentious issue is the cost of the bills. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Homeland Security bill would cost $1.3 billion from 2007-2011. Its estimate for the Transportation Committee's bill originally was $9.8 billion over the same period, but the panel protested that figure, prompting CBO to issue a dramatically lower estimate Friday that the bill would cost $1.1 billion over the five years, CongressDaily said.
The Homeland Security Committee is contesting the new estimate. "We're not convinced that the CBO re-score is accurate," said a committee aide. The aide added that the Homeland Security Committee is scrubbing its bill to determine if the CBO estimate for it should also be lower.
