That had 333 recommendations for reform to the Grant Programs at fema. Howev however, only found four permanent changes in which these recommendations came forward. Despite reform over a fiveyear period, little in the way of reform appears to have occurred. We had a hearing on this in 2013 in which we went through some of the various forms of waste occurring at fema. Even since that hearing, we still continue to have problems. 280,000 was recently spent for a bear cat Armored Vehicle in dover. We complained of a 600,000 bear cat Armored Vehicle for keen. I guess New Hampshire is ready for the next invasion. We also found recently or the inspectors have found 1. 7 million for unused radios and generators and 174,000 for unused radios in d. C. This is since we last meant to talk about waste. Every dollar wasted makes a difference two taxpayers. Right now, fema is more than 20 billion in debt because of the Flood Insurance program. Disaster spending often far outpaces the annual Funding C
Weather appears to be the new norm. Events like superstorm saturday which came to my shores and our shears in the mid atlantic a year or so ago, recent wildfires in ore parts of the country other parts of the country, dangerous tornadoes, historic droughts. They may well be just the tip of the iceberg of whats to come. And even today the east coast is preparing for yet another snowstorm while the west coast is experiencing a historic drought. And increased fire danger with no end in sight. I have a friend of mine who is from australia, and he tells me theyve had the hottest weather in their history, so go figure. Its just sort of a crazy world that we live in right now. For years, ive been working with a number of my colleagues, our colleagues to address the root causes and unfolding effects of what i believe is one of the Biggest Challenges of our generation. Thats Climate Change. According to the u. S. Global change research program, extreme weather events have increased in frequency
Screeria nigeria. A look at two Agency Budget requests, first fee mas budget then a hearing on the department of transportations 2016 budget. And later Border Patrol officials discuss threats and security along the u. S. canadian border. Next fema administrator craig fugate renting his agencys 2016 Budget Proposal to a Senate Appropriations budget committee. It is for disaster radio preparedness and resiliency. From capitol hill. This is about an hour and a half. I call this hearing to order for the dhs appropriations subcommittee. Today will be id like to welcome administrator fugate, administrator of fee ma. I appreciate very much you being here, also senator shaheen appreciate you being here as well. Were here to discuss the fiscal 2016 budget for your agency. Before we get into the substance of your budget id like to take a moment and thank you for sending roy wright to fargo several weeks ago. It was very helpful and actually will pertain or his visit there pertains to one of the
That have capabilityies, we want to address that life safety immediate response, communications evacuation and sheltering. Thats pretty much something youre going to need to do in a lot of different events. This is our idea that grant dollars have build a lot of capability are looking at where do we need to put more emphasis. Our first work with dot is looking at training capabilities, we want to make sure Senior Executives in the fire service have the latest. But also looking into the Grant Programs and again as we see these threats emerging, because this is dual use, we do have capability, we always go to the consequences, what are the things we need to do if that happens. From a lot of Emergency Management preparedness grants which i again support this administrations recommendation and committee has done a lot of work there, those preparedness grants, those are some of the dollars they can be using to develop this community plans. There are other programs that are not part of fema
Because it got wiped out. We need to move beyond that. We have to look at not just Building Back to what we always looked at cost benefit analysis and make investments. This gives us the ability to move beyond just looking at one set of criteria. It seems that your mitigation effort has to be focused on the actual hazard. In this budget youre looking at additional funds for Hazard Mitigation but i would certainly want to know that is based on the actual hazard itself and mitigate both the hazard and longterm cost for the federal government and the locality. And that has been the criteria for determining Hazard Mitigation. I can show you example where we have had predisaster mitigation. States have taken that like in oklahoma to do grants to families to build safe rooms for tornadoes. Our goal is to reduce risk. Theres a lot of driving factors of that and changing environment but when we want to look at, what are things as taxpayers if we can spend money on the front end and reduce futu