House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee leaders trumpeted their sweeping bill to reform federal disaster management in a Wednesday hearing, hoping to garner enough leadership attention to get a floor vote.
Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) have been pushing to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency with their H.R. 4669, the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act, but the legislation has not moved since its September committee approval.
Wednesday’s hearing saw disaster preparedness advocates, local officials and a former FEMA administrator — Craig Fugate — all testify in support of the bill.
The display was intended “to highlight for the leadership that we’ve done this work, it’s still necessary to do and we’d like to see some movement,” said Larsen during an interview.
