Senators Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) yesterday said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should remain within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and that eight organizations representing 1.7 million first responders have also recently endorsed that position.
Lieberman, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said reforms made in the past three years are contributing to FEMA’s success and that removing it from DHS, as some are suggesting, “would weaken FEMA, since the agency would no longer have the same ready access to the resources and expertise of the rest of DHS, and it would be more difficult to coordinate in a disaster.”
Letters supporting keeping FEMA in DHS were released by the committee. The supporting organizations include the Congressional Fire Services Institute, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the National Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the National Troopers Coalition, and the National Volunteer Fire Council.
Also the DHS Inspector General has reported that FEMA’s past difficulties are not a cause for removing it from the department.
Collins, who is the ranking member of the committee, also said that removing FEMA from DHS would make it harder to reform that country’s emergency response system as well as create competing agencies, which would confuse emergency responders.