Particularly hard. Im grateful to the fema employees i know are working hard to help us get through this. I think there is serious concerns about leadership coming from the white house during this pandemic as well as a need for greater level of transparency around new initiatives of fema. Joining me to discuss the administrations response, my colleague from the Home Security committee, val demings, representing florida and being a former First Responder herself, she is no tranger to disaster. Additionally we have a special guest online today, the former fema administrator under the Obama Administration, craig fugate. Before leaving fema, he headed the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Before that he worked in the Emergency Management and the local level in florida. With experience at the federal, state and local levels, there is not a better guess to discuss guest to discuss what is going on. The nside is important for the general public as well as us onducting oversight of the response which has been seen, which has seen fema involved in the largest disastrous response of the age. I look forward to earing your thoughts on some of these developments as well as where congress should focus their efforts to help boost femas response as well as provide proper oversight on the agencys activities. Now i will recognize representative demings so she can give opening remarks. Good morning. Thank you again, mr. Chairman, for bringing us together for this critical and important discussion. Also to my fellow floridian craig fugate, thank you for being with us today to try to determine where we are or have a discussion about where we are and more importantly where we need to go from here. I want to thank you for your service to florida and our country. You have, greg, on so many occasions, helped us prepare or the storms ahead and helped us to recover and restore after the disaster past. Passeedd. We have a new storm that is big and deadly. I am concerned about the administrations response. I am concerned about local and state governments being able to get the help and resources that they need. We know that ima has a major fema has a major role to play. The Vice President said fema ould coordinate the response activities. I look forward to activities. I look forward to assessing where we are in our response with a focus on transparency, coordination and necessary oversight. Thank you for bringing us together. Craig fugate, thank you for joining s. I yield back. Thank you. Mr. Fugate, if you dont mind, i would like to ump in to questions. Actually, let me give you a few minutes just to give an overview of the response the you have seen it fema during this pandemic. Well, as anybody has watched when fema was placed in the job of helping coordinate all this, this goes back to the planning we did in the h1n1 pandemic, looking at sars and mers and then ebola. Fema would be a support agency to the centers for Disease Control and health and human services. We would bring the resources of fema to support them including logistics, things like the air bridge, which are things fema has done for other disasters. Is different to see fema it was different to see fema placed in the lead role. Femas job is, as the president irects, to coordinate crisis esponse. A lot of people thought fema would not be able to do i wont say it is easy but they are still responding o disasters. They are managing this through the key questions, what has worked but also more importantly , what do we need to do differently next time . We have a second wave being forecasted with covid19. Hurricane season is not going to be postponed. Need to get to the questions of what was working, codify and ake sure we dont lose that. Also ask the question not so much went what went wrong. The better question is what do we need to do differently to prepare for the next pandemic, the next major disaster . Rep. Payne all right. Thank you for the assessment. Let me ask you, what is your assessment of femas response to covid19 . And what is the Agency Getting right and what are the avenues they need to improve . Getting right what is ty and what are the areas they need to improve . Its hard to say when you are not there and i dont want to secondguess the team, but my early observation was there were a lot of tools that have not been utilized. Late,ave been utilized like the defense production act. Programs that fema cannot independently turn on. , fema cannot manage what they dont have. Starting out late in the game with the National Stockpiles do, if in what they can you are going to use fema, i think you need to make the decision to use it early. That delay put fema in a difficult position. You have answered my followup question. I will year old the floor to representative demings. Think you so much, mr. Chairman. You said it and we all know it. , regardless ofn what is going on, Hurricane Season has not been canceled. It isow here how critical for us to be prepared and responsible and to effectively manage and juggle limited resources and staff to do everything. Closer, wecloser and are about a month out from the start of Hurricane Season. How do you see femas role changing someone as they also coordinate National Response to ensure that we are ready . Something i now Emergency Managers are looking at. Covid19 is not going away until we have a vaccine. How do we make social distancing one of the more powerful tools we have . Administration, we were very reluctant to turn these on and look for significant impact. Wethis era of covid19, might support much broader land fall declaration and start to turn on some of the sheltering program we normally turn off after a hurricane hits. One is putting them in hotels. Look at thated to program preland fall, particularly in the areas where we do have significant abounds of hotels and motels available. Be able togoing to move a lot of emergency workers around the country like we normally do. In feeding examples thepublic right now many of organizations are turning to local restaurants and hiring them to prepare meals. At all we need to look of our current workforce as Emergency Forces and reimburse states and local government who hire local residents to provide and help feed people in the event of a disaster, as well as. Hings like Contact Tracing i think we need to be much more aggressive in funding and , also notg programs relying on volunteers and responders. You also talked earlier about tot the resiliency of states deal with whatever challenges are ahead. What do you believe are some of the things states should be thinking about in terms of resiliency moving forward, whether another pandemic or a National Disaster . What are some things to improve infrastructure or make it more resilient. We know that Climate Change doesnt stop because of covid19 and we are increasingly seeing the impact of climate disruption. One of the opportunities we may have as we look at investments is to continue to invest in building more resilient infrastructure. This may be one of the tools that helps get the economy going. Work,put people back to we help the economy start back, but more importantly, take a lot of our aging infrastructure and move it to where it needs to be. We also make it more resilient to disasters. Thank you. Do you think we will be able to continue to respond to covid19 as the nation faces National Natural disasters . Think you pretty much have answered the. I think it is interesting what you say in reference to that. Staffing. Sue is it has been a challenge for fema with the agency being short of its goals. What should fema be doing to morale . Maintaining morale is always going to be a challenge in the federal government but fema is very much a missiondriven agency. Concern is not giving the brakes. There are staff that have been areg nonstop on this but the same staff coordinating responses. We had a major earthquake and a big flood and we needed more people. But i had to do was to pull people off of the older disasters and pause permanent work to stabilize. Doable. Sruptive, but and if we pause for several months, is less likely to cause major impact. It isnt easy, but fema can do this. The training of centers have been checked down, i know that fema has been looking all morning and how to do training virtually. Hope we woulds i so support from congress that we can hire and train people locally. Doable, but probably the biggest impact may be other disasters. We may have to hit pause on that work to focus on the next disaster. Other than the fema administrator, there are top spots at fema. There are many other spots at the department. What effect does that lack of. Eadership have on the response negative, which is if you dont have the clinical appointment, are you represented in the administrations decisions. The career folk are outstanding, but if they are not at the table representing agency interest, that fema gets left out. Fema gets left out and that is a heavy burden for the administrator to do. Often, we have seen with the career folks are included but maybe not in the same way that the political appointments happen. Thank you i yield to representative demings. Thank you, mr. Chairman. That thisned earlier is a Public Health crisis. Given a leadership role in this particular response. What were some of the things that were in place during our response to that crisis that you believe worked and could serve beneficial today. The first was scienceled policy. They are in lockstep with Health Officials who are making that recommendation. We are very much following the lead of our the second thing was identifying that protective equipment was going to be a key shortfall. These were designed for disasters and focused localized responses. In a pandemic, it would only serve as official packages. Ouruse so much of protective equipment is manufactured overseas, the disease protection act would be a tool that would have to be considered early. Had, which is we saw this response, was that you may not have a lot of cases. Was, and as we saw with covid19, there are numbers. We need to go back and think about our particular act. We need to turn on the defense protection act and create scenarios without that response. Creates aing it dynamic where we cant catch up. We have also talked about transparency and oversight. I believe in situations like this, look, we didnt plan covid19 but the American People expect for us to deal with it and to save as many lives as we can. Having been there for so long , howg this administration important is transparency number one, how important is coordinated communication . Not just among the administration, but also with American People . Challenge wee faced was a lack of communication. Had a lot of events where we are going to have shortfalls. I felt we needed to be talking to governors and their teams. They may not always agree, but they should know why we are making these decisions and the challenges they face. The scenariosn where we gave them all the information, at least they understood why we were making our decisions. I always figured it was better to give people bad news upfront than to not address it and have it come up yet another forum. Now we are dealing with more challenges because we didnt tell people on the frontend. And if i could just ask one more question. Team thatic response was certainly a part of the administration, how important of a role did they play in terms of coordinating effort and response . It was a team approach. President obama was a big believer that no one agency would have all the answers. Using the National Security council as a coordinating hub, we all worked together on our pandemic plans. It would have been the scientists in the federal government leading the response but incorporating all the aspects of homeland security, fema, the department of defense, and now we are seeing more and more. The ideas that you want the experts leading the response but you dont want them doing it by one of the things i was recognizing the Obama Administration that we had collected some orders. There is a tendency to think of fema as only dealing with her earthquakes, but it is actually the ability to coordinate any major crisis. Because this is femas core , it can bring the tools so that hopefully next time they are brought in earlier, not after things arent working. And then use their tools in the interagency relationship and all the things we do to support that agency and crisis. Thank you. Thank you, representatives. Fema has yet to activate most of its individual assistance aid tos, which provide directly to families such as funeral assistance. What do you make of this, and what do you think is the hold up on improving this . , fema cannotely add assistance on this, but early on, i thought that fema should have been looking at individual assistance faster. They could speak on individual prices and services. The cares act did create a bit of a challenge because there are going to be a lot of questions about duplication of benefits. But in many questions, because these programs are up and running, they could be utilized to find time for the cares act. And after it was past, to sort that out. I think there are aspects of that program that could be turned on. Fema does not have independent authority to do that. As to why not, i dont understand. Congress has been supporting replenishing the Disaster Relief and has certainly supported additional funds for responding to covid19. One final question. There are rumors that as the white house is now turning its focus to reopening of the , ive heard today that 21 states are loosening up their requirements. Is working to transition out of its role in lead federal agencies. Do you think that is the right or if it is jumping the gun . I dont think it is. Timing has to be internal to see where things are at. No different than when we ask the white house to assist with unaccompanied children. Think of fema as an acute sponsor agency. As they are reaching that point and covid19 is not over for some time. Are we reaching the point where the more traditional responsibilities will now be able to take over some of those roles . The timing will always be in question, but the idea that fema gets to the point where it is ,ore of a longerterm response i think thats a good thing. Or, do we lose move prematurely and lose the progress we have been making . I think the timing is really something to be looked at. Thank you. I have just one personal question. If a chief executive officer or president of the United States in the future called upon you to serve again, would you entertain it . You would have to ask my wife. [laughter] great answer. Before we close, i just want to give you a moment to offer any Closing Remarks or anything you think the public should know. Given everything that has been said, my only advice is to listen. And never for once think that the rankandfile arent giving it their all and trying to address this. Fema, like any organization is going to be learning. They will improve. But never think they arent doing Everything Possible to get it done and prepare for the next disaster. Thanknk you for that and you for taking the time to be here with us and answer our questions. We really appreciate your involvement and valuable insight to the committee. We will do this as we move forward in forming our policy. Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell announced the senate will return for legislative work this monday. They will vote on an executive nomination and later in the week , could work on coronavirus related legislation. Steny hoyer said after and aning with members attending physician, the house will not return for legislative work next week but instead they will continue to hold reef pro forma sessions every three days. Negotiations continue on different options to vote remotely. Although live Senate Coverage on cspan2 and the house on cspan. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, dr. Rebekah bernard, president of physicians for patients protection discusses how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting primary health care access. And arthur evans on stress and coping strategies during the pandemic. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. This morning. Join the discussion. Oh yay. Y, businessns having before the Honorable Supreme Court of the United States should give their attention. The court is now sitting. For the first time in history, here the u. S. Supreme court live. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the court is hearing oral arguments in 10 cases by teleconference. Cspan will provide live coverage of each of the sessions. On monday at 10 00 eastern, the justices will hear the case of the Patent Office versus booking. Com. The case concerns the booking companys case. Live monday at 10 00 eastern on cspan. On demand at cspan. Org or listen on the freeseas and radioactive. And immediately following the lives of bring court session, joined Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution center leading a live discussion with scholars. Secretaryouse press Kayleigh Mcenany fielded questions from reporters on a range of issues in her first briefing including china and the World Health Organizations response to the coronavirus outbreak. Former National Security adviser michael flynn, and the Sexual Assault allegation against former Vice President joe biden