Price Statement on FEMA 2015 Budget Request

Administrator Fugate, thank you for joining us this morning to discuss FEMA’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2015.  Your tenure has been a busy one, particularly in 2011, which brought a record high 99 Major Disaster Declarations, along with 29 Emergency Declarations and 114 Fire Management Assistance Declarations, also a record level.   Since 2011, we have seen an additional 109 Major Declarations, including of course Superstorm Sandy in 2012 – the biggest test of FEMA’s capabilities since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  

I also want to express my sympathies to the families affected by devastating mudslides in Washington State. These mudslides have claimed 16 lives and continue to pose unique dangers to those undertaking rescue efforts. Administrator Fugate, FEMA personnel have once again responded quickly to this disaster and are working diligently with first responders in Washington under extremely difficult circumstances. We commend them for their efforts.

Mr. Administrator, by almost all accounts, FEMA has performed admirably under your leadership and has been there for the American people in every one of these disasters.  As an agency, FEMA has had its ups and downs over the years, but it seems clear to me that you and your team are doing something right. So we commend you for that and thank you for your continued leadership.

The budget request for FEMA is $10.4 billion, including $6.4 billion for major disasters under the Budget Control Act cap adjustment.  Excluding this major disaster funding, the request totals $3.97 billion, $384.6 million – or 8.8 percent – below the current year level. 

Much of that cut, I was disappointed again to see, is attributable to a $223 million reduction in state and local discretionary grants. The cut is almost $300 million, or nearly 20 percent, when considering both discretionary grants and training grants. I recognize that the President’s Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative (OGSI) proposes additional funding for FEMA grants, and I support the initiative, which shows what the House could do if Republicans were willing to close a few tax loopholes. But that is not the same as including the funding in FEMA’s base budget request, nor is there any chance of its implementation prior to our Subcommittee mark being produced. 

The cut to grant funding is once again paired with a proposal to consolidate the discretionary grant programs into a single National Preparedness Grant Program.  As you know, stakeholder groups have had serious concerns about this approach, some of which you can perhaps address today.  But I do want to credit you for submitting authorizing legislation for the program this year, something that has been missing for the prior iterations of the proposal. 

We need to better understand the implications of wholly restructuring these grants. The proposal does more than just change the structure of the programs themselves – it could change the entire dynamic of who gets funding, how funding is dispersed, and what activities become eligible. I continue to have concerns about how this approach will work in practice. Would we risk pitting Governors against Mayors, for example, or state capitals against their most populous cities? Answers to these questions still need further development and I look forward to hearing your thoughts this morning.

I also must register my misgivings over the number of cities that will be funded through UASI in FY14. To increase the number of cities by 56 percent, while at the same time proposing a 2015 budget that cuts $300 million in funding seems incongruous to me. I thought we had reached a consensus that this program should concentrate on urban areas that face the highest terrorism risk and not used to spread the wealth around, and I’m having trouble understanding why we seem to be backsliding on what is perhaps our most highly focused program by reverting to a broad dispersal of funding.  

I also want to express concern about the proposed cut to the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, along with the proposal to transfer the funding and administrative responsibility for the program to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

The budget also includes what is now a familiar proposal to eliminate the pre-disaster mitigation program. I acknowledge the inclusion of a pre-disaster mitigation initiative in the O-G-S-I, but again, that hardly mitigates the lack of funding in your base budget.

 Administrator Fugate, I want to thank you again for your service to the country.  I look forward to a good discussion this morning on how we can help you do your job ever better.