Fixing FEMA

Michael Chertoff has all the answers… Now… About six months too late…

Unfortunately, his answers seem to rely on more government, larger budgets, and bigger agencies.

Adding details to past pledges, Chertoff proposed to create a full-time FEMA response force of 1,500 employees, instead of relying largely on volunteers, push “wrenching change” to integrate FEMA within Homeland Security, increase capacity of its disaster registration systems to handle 200,000 people a day, and push claims personnel into the field to serve victims instead of requiring them to use the Internet or telephones.

So despite the fact that FEMA, throughout its history, has been a full-time response agency tasked only with responding to emergencies, the problem is apparently that it needs more people. Why is it government bureaucrat solutions to everything boil down to ‘more people, more money’? Have they never considered, ‘fewer people, leaner management, better communications’?

So our government bureaucracy will become more bloated, fatter, and less responsive. When the next disaster strikes, our response is even worse, and more people are left dead, will we finally realize that adding bodies to the payroll doesn’t prevent bodies in the street? Will they finally figure out no amount of money can topple the bureaucratic hurdles left in place?

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