Scrap FEMA? Why?

Under the stewardship of President Bill Clinton, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a model of good government. It had a clearly-defined mission. It managed its resources with maximum effectiveness. It did its job.

Under Clinton, FEMA was a cabinet-level agency whose director had a direct line to the president. If there was a bureaucratic hurdle that the agency's experienced and extremely capable director could not overcome, he had the ear of Clinton, who could remove any obstacle with a phone call.

Under Clinton, FEMA was the most effective agency in the federal government.

Under George W. Bush, FEMA became the crony dumping ground that it was under his daddy. He appointed anti-government ideologues, political hacks, and rapacious money-grubbers to positions of authority in an agency whose function is to relieve the suffering of Americans whose lives have been rent by disaster.

The brain-trust in the Republican-led senate, seeing what a wreck FEMA has become under Bush's mismanagement have a solution. Is it to restore FEMA to its former strength by returning to the Clinton model? It is not!

The GOP solution for what ails FEMA is to eliminate FEMA.

A Senate report about problems affecting the Federal Emergency Management Agency has boosted arguments by lawmakers who want the agency overhauled.

The report says FEMA isn't capable of responding to a large-scale disaster and should be replaced.

"I think this clearly confirms what folks in Louisiana have known for months -- that FEMA is beyond repair," said Sen. David Vitter, R-Metairie.

The report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said FEMA has been damaged by years of poor leadership and shrinking budgets. The report, the result of eight months of investigations and dozens of hearings, said FEMA should be dismantled, rebuilt from the ground up, and renamed the National Preparedness Agency.

It stopped short of recommending that the replacement agency become independent of the Homeland Security Department. But it said the new agency should be given greater autonomy and allowed to report directly to the White House during catastrophes.

The "years of poor leadership and shrinking budgets" that have plagued FEMA are by no means insoluble problems. They can be solved by improving the leadership of FEMA and restoring its funding. The suggestion that these problems cannot be solved defies logic. Are GOP senators saying that there is no potential director of FEMA who could perform better than did Joe Albaugh or Michael Brown?

And, if there is nobody who could take over FEMA and run it better than those two hacks, then who on earth is supposed to take the helm at the proposed National Preparedness Agency? If FEMA is unworthy of a bigger budget, why would the NPA be worthy of one?

No, the problems with FEMA come from its having been managed by people who did not believe it should exist in the first place. They did not believe in the agency's mission. They did not believe that the federal government should even be in the business of relieving the suffering of disaster survivors. Viewed in this context, FEMA's failure to respond properly to Hurricane Katrina was not an aberration. It was the logical consequence of Bush's governing philosophy.

Now that their ideology has been proven to be utterly bankrupt, Republicans seek to hide the evidence of their failure by removing from sight its most vivid example.

There is no reason to think that Bush's NPA will be any more effective than was Bush's FEMA. His governing philosophy has not changed. The man does not believe in a federal role in disaster relief any more today than he did the day before New Orleans drowned.

And, if Bush does accept the recommendation to scrap FEMA and build a new agency from the ground up, let us pray he does a better job than he did with the Department of Homeland Security.