Democratic and Republican lawmakers laid out strikingly different views Tuesday of the Trump Administration's firing of Federal Emergency Management Agency workers in an era of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, with potential significant costs to states and localities.
The exchange was part of a House Committee on Homeland Security subcommitte hearing. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Ala, chairman of the Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology, said the hearing's purpose was to solicit feedback from emergency management community stakeholders to help guide President Donald Trump's Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council as it explores what aspects of FEMA warrant the most reform.
President Trump established the FEMA Review Council via a Jan. 24 executive order. The future of FEMA is important for cities and states as federal support is seen as crucial to them as extreme weather events have become more common.
"Let me be clear – the American people cannot afford to let President Trump and Elon Musk take a chainsaw to FEMA," Rep. Tim Kennedy, D-N.Y., the subcommittee's ranking member, said during the hearing, which was entitled "Future of FEMA: Perspectives from the Emergency Management Community."
Disasters such as wildfires, floods and hurricanes "are striking harder and more often," Kennedy said, adding that he was "deeply concerned" about what he called "the Trump administration's attack on FEMA."
"President Trump has threatened to dismantle the agency, fired 200 employees, pushed out 800 more under Elon Musk's unfunded resignation scheme," Kennedy said. "It's a reckless and dangerous move that undermines disaster response when we need it the most."
During the hearing, Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, also sharply criticized the Trump administration's firing of FEMA workers. Johnson asked witness Timothy Manning, a former deputy administrator for protection and national preparedness at FEMA, how federal, state and local governments can effectively prepare for and respond to growing climate threats without federal support. She also asked him what consequences those cuts would have for under-served communities.
In response, Manning said that "the change in policy to disincentivize or even prohibit the consideration of climate change will have (an) incredibly detrimental effect on preparedness" across the nation.
"It is changing … the complexion of hazards in America," he said. "There are more severe storms, more severe impacts than we have seen historically."
"If we only plan forward based on what we have experienced historically, we will be drastically under-preparing going forward and people will be in danger and may lose lives," Manning said.
Also during the hearing, Chairman Strong said there were a few areas of potential reform that he wanted to highlight. In recent years "FEMA's mission set has expanded greatly" to include tasks that go beyond preparing for and responding to "traditional disasters," he said.
"For example, FEMA assisted the federal government's efforts in providing shelter and supplies to UACs from the Southwest border," Strong said. UAC is short for unaccompanied alien children.
"As we contemplate how best to reconfigure or establish efficiencies within FEMA to support its operations, we must ask whether FEMA's expanding mission set has slowly exhausted the agency's resources and workforce preventing it from completing its core mission to the highest level of sufficiency," he said.
In addition to its "mission creep," there are also concerns "that FEMA has also enabled a certain degree of waste," the Chairman said.
"A (Government Accountability Office) report found that FEMA mishandled the administration of funds for its COVID-19 funeral assistance program, with at least $4.8 million being approved for duplicate or ineligible applicants," Strong said.
Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., expressed similar sentiments regarding mission creep.
"We now have a FEMA that has become the Uber service for illegal immigrants in the last two and three years," Brecheen said. "FEMA is involved with 30 different federal agencies now, and so we have major mission creep that has to be reined in."
