Washington – Governor and state legislation may have to strengthen their reaction and recovery efforts for natural disasters in the coming years, while President Donald Trump is looking for opportunities to shift the role of the federal government to states.
Trump, who proposed to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week, has since set up a 20-strong committee on the order of the executive to review and propose ways to revise its work.
The fate of the national flood insurance program managed by FEMA will also be in the air of more than 4.7 million home owners when the process begins.
“I think the Fema is not good,” said Trump In North Carolina on Friday. “I think if you have such a problem, you want to go and – whether it is a democrat or a Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not to waste time to call Fema.”
Trump said he had recommended that “Fema disappear and we pay directly – we pay the state a percentage.”
“But the state should fix this,” said Trump. “If the state had done this from the start, it would have been a much better situation.”
“Full evaluation” for FEMA
Trumps Executive order It is found that “Americans open up an immediate, effective and impartial reaction and the recovery of disasters”.
“The FEMA therefore requires a complete review of people who have experienced with high experts in effective catastrophe reaction and request with high experts who have to recommend presidential improvements or structural changes to promote national interest and to enable national resistance,” says in of the executive regulation.
The secretary of the home protection authority, Kristi Noem, and Defense Minister Pete Hegseth becomes the Co-chairman group of 20. The White House did not answer a question when Trump would name the other members.
The Council is to publish a report later this year, in which Fema’s reaction to different natural disasters is compared, as the state was affected by emergency attention. The report is also expected how the states reacted to natural disasters before the then President Jimmy Carter was signed in Executive Order in 1979 and female.
The US house spokesman Mike Johnson said during one press conference Monday that he supports how the FEMA works, but he had to remove the agency.
“In my experience, it is very often the case that local workers, people who work through the Fema do pretty good work,” said Johnson. “But it is often the leadership at the top that can affect the result of a disaster.”
Johnson said that no department or agency should be considered for the assessment outside of the borders, since Trump “makes the government more efficient and more effective” and the Republican legislator is looking for ways to “restrict the size and scope of the government”.
“Fema was a partner, but you could probably be a better partner,” said Johnson.
Let states guide the answer
The Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham said on Monday that Trump’s preferred approach was to carry out the states their own emergency reaction and to be reimbursed with federal dollars.
“Fema is sometimes frustrating,” Graham told reporters in Columbia, “I want to make it easier to help people with disaster help.”
Graham expects everything that comes from the study to land somewhere in the middle – and does not fully remove the federal authority, but cuts part of the bureaucracy.
“If you want to watch the Fema to form the Fema to make it more effective, count me,” said Graham.
In the last total annual expenditure account for the agency, the congress has acquired $ 25.3 billion for the FEMA, the $ 72.9 million less than the previous financing level and $ 267 million under the budget application from Joe Biden of 267 , $ 7 million, according to the then President Joe Biden. A household summary.
The legislator provided an additional 29 billion US dollars for FEMA’s disaster relief funds. An emergency expenditure account This congress approved at the end of December.
The national press spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, Devon Cruz, wrote in a statement that the GOP was “floating dangerous ideas”.
“When natural disasters occurred, democratic governors were a leading example of putting politics aside and helping the families to rebuild and recover,” wrote Cruz. “Now Donald Trump and Congress Republicans shamelessly politicians shamelessly disaster and floating risky ideas that would make it more tough to aid families to rebuild their houses, schools and communities. This is only the latest example of the growing contrast between republican -managed functional disorders in DC and democratic governors who achieve real results in their states every day. “
The National Governors Association refused to comment on how the potential changes would affect states and their budgets. The national conference of the state legislators and the Republican Governor Association did not respond to inquiries about comments.
Billions sent to states in federal dollars
Fema has an interactive State-by-State creeping How much the federal government has spent on the reaction and recovery of natural disasters since 2017 does not include emergency financing for COVID-19.
The website shows how much Fema has spent on helping every state or territory to recover from emergencies, as well as how much the departments for agriculture, defense, health and human services, housing and urban development, interiors and means of transport have spent.
The website shows that the departments and agencies have assigned around 250 billion US dollars to the natural disasters dealt with in the data, whereby significant amounts went to red states that supported Trump in the presidential elections and are mainly represented by GOP legisans in the congress.
The home state Louisiana by spokesman Johnson, for example, was assigned $ 19.3 billion at 11.5 billion US dollars from Fema.
In South Dakota, the majority of the majority leader of the Senate John Thune, the Federal Government assigned almost 400 million US dollars, with Fema making 275.6 million dollars of this sum.
Florida, which has supported the main load of several hurricanes and tropical storms in the years covered in the years, was assigned 29.5 billion US dollars for disaster aid with $ 19 billion.
Jessica Holdman, Senior reporter from South Carolina Daily Gazette, contributed to this report.
Last updated at 5:15 p.m., January 27, 2025
