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television news, talking about the role agencies provider.the other thing that fs

virus?

guest: because of the disaster is really not relevant to fema. whether it is a virus, a pandemic, hurricane, and , it is sort of agnostic when it comes been what we think of as natural disasters. deal with any sort of disaster.

that is the design of fema. it is this all-purpose agency. host: is a power that is currently being applied to covid-19 from fema? guest: they have got about 1200 people out of a workforce of 14,000 assigned to covid-19. actually, fema has had some staffing issues in the past. they are in relatively decent shape right now. toyou go back a year ago, when we had these massive floods in the great plains and upper midwest, fema was stretched a lot more thinly and they have done an ok job in the last year adding staff. they are ok, for now. the question will be, what happens in the coming months when the spring flood season arrives and you start getting all of these communities in missouri and the dakotas

flooded? that is when you will see a real strain on fema's resources. as of now, it is ok. host: has fema leadership address that possibility help what happens? have they made indications if they are prepared? guest: you are asking these questions and they say, basically, we play the hand that is dealt to us. we will respond in the best way we can. , i think the last number i saw is about 5000 workers available to be deployed. that is a reasonable cushion. fema has gotten as low as just a couple of thousand, just to give you some context. fema is in better shape than it has been. nobody knows what is going to happen.

fema has the capacity to hire short-term, temporary basis in localities. fema has got a lot of resources he can call on. the question will be, how well let be able to do that? for: tom frank joining us this conversation about fema's role in the covid-19 response. if you want to ask him questions, it is (202) 748-8000 for the central and east time zones. andou live in the mountain pacific time zones you can call us at (202) 748-8001. you can also text is that (202) 748-8003. during hurricane season, we always hear about the issue of money and whether fema has enough money to do what they have to do during that time. what about the sources of funding in this case? are those same concerns there? guest: no.

will the $2.2 trillion congress just passed, that bill $45cates an additional billion for fema. what i mentioned at the beginning of the show, this disaster relief fund, which is basically the big pot of money from which fema pays expenses, that is now up over $90 billion, which is an extraordinary amount of money. the thing to understand about lows --that, if fema runs low on money congress can pass another appropriations bill. congress has done that repeatedly in the past few years, like after the 2017 hurricane season. the money issue is a bit of a red herring. if the fema funds runs low, then really all congress has to do is just appropriate more money. as congress has shown, with the

$2.2 trillion budget that it just enacted, it is not going to hold back. money is going to be the least of fema's concerns right now. host: talk about the relationship between fema and the army corps of engineers. what did they do and then how does fema complement that? guest: to put it simply, the corps works for fema. fema has this authority. fema acts on behalf of the president to assign any federal agency to do anything. the army corps plays a lead role in construction and building up facilities. so, just taking for example what happened in new york city with the javits center, that went through fema. governor cuomo, mayor de blasio, they say, we think we can convert the javits center into a makeshift hospital.

fema says, ok army corps of out.eers, go check it the army corps since of people to check it out and then fema some ok, go hire contractors to do the work. that is how it works. the army corps is really a key player, the key player in building or getting built all of these shift hospitals and tickle centers that are being established all over the country. the head of the army corps was on tv saying that they had 620ived, i think it was requests from mayors and city officials around the country to check out convention centers, empty stadiums, abandoned warehouses or whatnot to see if they could be suitable for conversion into some sort of temporary medical facility. some of those medical facilities are going to be used for

treating patients with covid-19 and some will be used specifically not for patients with covid-19, but to handle what would be called the overflow so that the hospitals can handle the patient's with covid-19. host: again, tom frank joining us. in new york. start to soft. cass, good morning. caller: good morning. i have been listening to your comments this morning and i would like to point out that as a former fema employee currently there are not enough disaster assistance employees in the nation. there is only about 4000. at the peak of that staffing level they used to be about 12,000. i just want to remind everyone aat fema's main goal is running agency. resources tote respond to natural disasters and

pandemics. agency -- agencies that supply the assistance at this time our state department of health. i also want to remind everyone that there seems to be a little confusion about how disaster declarations are declared. disasters are handled at the local level and once at the county level, those resources are overwhelmed. those counties ask for a state declaration and the state supplies resources to those counties. then once those state resources are overwhelmed, that is when they ask for a presidential declaration. once estates are issued presidential disaster declarations, that is when federal funds and federal resources are applied to whatever disaster it is. caller, you are putting a

lot out there. mr. frank, you can respond to any of that as you wish. guest: it is a confusing, bureaucratic process. is -- theant point caller is talking about presidential declarations. a presidential declaration is when the president declares, you know, such and such an area, a state, is a major disaster. it's means that a state is overwhelmed. a state doesn't have to actually get to the point that it has spent its last dollar. -- when hurricane harvey was headed toward texas or have hurricane maria was headed toward puerto rico, those governors did not wait until the hurricane had hit, they asked for the disaster declaration when they see the hurricane coming. the president, with the advice of fema usually will declare it. nobody wants to wait until

everything has gone haywire before the federal government gets involved. they want to do that as much before as possible. host: houston, texas. thomas is next. caller: another thomas. fema, are you serious? i am in houston. we are still waiting for harvey relief. -- four for the toxic of the top executives of fema were fired for corruption. listen people, i don't know what you are going to do. i went to a contractor. the guy signed off on the thing. never got it. still waiting on it. he was denied. you think fema is going to help you out? lord help you. be veryema can frustrating. one of the things fema does, it

doesn't just write blank checks and send them to governors. it goes through an incredibly incredibly laborious process reviewing reconstruction sure that it complies with all sorts of federal standards. when they work is done, reviewing it to make sure everything has been done properly. then it writes the check. it is reimbursement, not advance payment. .t can take years just give you an idea -- hurricane katrina, ima is still writing checks to louisiana for reimbursing those payments. it is a long, frustrating process. up,way the system is set those checks and balances built in. as far as individuals getting their own checks, or if your house got destroyed, that also can be a very frustrating process.

because there are rules that fema has the following about who is eligible, who can get it, who can't. if you have insurance, and you can get certain things, can't get other things. no one ever accused fema of being too simple an agency or a pushover. it is difficult and it is very frustrating. one of the goals fema has laid out in the past couple of years is simplification. fema follows the rules that congress wrote. really, fema administers the system it was given by the lawmakers. fema can do certain things to make it more simple, but it has to follow the law. it is a federal agency handed inferred -- and enforces laws. hello. mr. frank, i'm a little confused. are you an employee of fema or are you a news writer? guest: i am a news writer.

-- my question is, the president and the doctors made an announcement yesterday that they are going to stop the middleman trafficking of the masks and so forth. they are buying them up and selling them to foreign countries. does fema guest: have control over that? guest: no. agency on acquisition behalf of the states. fema is not involved in that. that gets into businesses and what they are selling. role that femahe plays in the distribution from the federal stockpile? guest: fema decides who gets it. fema consults with ecdc to figure out -- the cdc to figure

out where the need is greatest and then does the distribution. unusualin a very position because this is the first time in fema's history -- fema started in 1979 -- that it has actually had to make these decisions. we are going to give x to new york, and y to washington. usually when fema is dealing with a disaster, it is only a few states at a time. had, it isane harvey only texas that is set so fema doesn't have to make these decisions. but that is the decision fema will have to make. they don't have to make it on their own. there will be in touch with the department of health and human services. host: does the white house have a role in that distribution decision? guest: sure. , inything that fema does is

theory, on behalf of the white house, whether the white house will actually get involved in saying you can send this many masks to such and such a state, i don't know if they will. fema is usually able to act on its own. going are asking, is he to be political interference? that is always a possibility, but i think that something like this will be left to the professionals. saying, oh,ple are this is all going to be political, but if you look at the states, for example, have gotten, where the army corps has gone to build these makeshift medical centers, the states that has got -- the state that has gotten the most is new york state. which, of course, is a blue state. california got a navy hospital and new york got another navy hospital.

people will certainly be watching. theake sure that distribution of all resources is done where it is needed. host: who are the people at fema who have to make those choices directly? guest: the head of fema, the administrator, peter gaynor, is ultimately the one that will sign off on the decisions. he has got a lot of deputy administrators who specialize in these things. ultimately it is the administrator who makes the decision. he is a political appointee. host: does the administrator depend heavily on the white house for those comp -- those consultations? guest: i don't know. the white house coronavirus task force is involved. but the white house coronavirus task force includes people from the cdc as well as the white house. who is actually going to sit down and make the final decision about who gets what. host: sharon is next.

sharon from beaverton, oregon. caller: thank you for taking my call. my concern is, the states are bidding at up against each other. it surprises me that the federal government has not taken more of , and overall picture. even with logistics, because we know our military go into countries and set up entire systems of living in a short time. that is what concerns me is, i see the state bidding each other up. right now the money doesn't mean inh, but all of that gouging the end when this is all over and our economy is rough, we will have gotten fewer supplies and it will have cost tax dollars greatly. your comment on that please? guest: it is a good point. governors have been saying that as well. you have heard governor cuomo

saying he is getting into bidding wars. fema,e extent, you know, peter gaynor has given that signal. states,aid publicly to if you can get these materials on your own, get them. of course, states are going to do whatever they can to get what they can. fema does not have enough ventilators right now. stockpile has not been able to meet the demand. that is why you are getting to this situation where states are going out on their own. they can't get everything they need from the national stockpile and that is leading to these adding wars. it is leading in some cases to price gouging. price gouging happens all the time after disasters, whether you are talking about medical supplies for gasoline. price suddenly doubled -- doubling overnight. that is something for the

justice department to enforce. he wrote aat and, story about the defense production act. i know plenty of heard over the days, tell us about its use at this point in the coronavirus response. the defense production act is used. the president voted a week ago or so to enforce -- to force general motors to start making ventilators. and, that is the main way it can be used. the other whether people don't understand as much is that, instead of ordering a company like general motors to start producing something that it does not ordinarily produce, fema can go to a company and -- that is producing an item and say, you

are already producing these things, we want the first batch next. in other words, what is at the front of the line. we don't care if you have lots of orders. that is a federal law. fema does that all the time to get things. ,n the case of hurricanes tarps. they will go to the manufacturer and say you want the next 10,000 that you produce. if fema is going to be using it so much now, because the supplies that are needed aren't really disaster supplies as much as they are medical supplies. from we will hear next atlanta, georgia. caller: yes. i agree with the person who commented about the fema issue. because westronger

don't have stronger laws on the books to keep these people from committing arson. in california and the tornado victims are not being concentrated on trying to get their lives back on ground. there house got torn down a big wind, but that is not the issue. continue getting their lives back on track. if fema denies them that right, then the states get what they deserve. i am not a government person. i am a person who believes that man does not stand on its two feet just to stand on its two feet. we don't all have billions of dollars to get us out of the

hospital or rebuild our houses. guest: you mentioned tornadoes. of that is a good example one disaster not related to covid-19 that fema is responding to. the tornado that swept through tennessee several weeks ago. fema is there and fema is doing what it normally does in terms of helping communities rebuild their infrastructure, trying to get money to homeowners whose homes were destroyed. tornadoes can be very devastating. they are not as big an issue in this country as hurricanes and flooding are. but fema definitely responds to tornadoes and they are on the ground in tennessee has we speak. from overland park, kansas.

caller: this is rick. i just wanted to quickly make the comment, you mentioned you were a news writer. actually, you are an author and a pundit. guest: no, stop. that is my namesake. there is another tom frank who is an author and a pundit and he also lives in washington, d.c.. we are two completely different people. caller: i apologize. guest: that's ok, it happens all the time. caller: on fema, you mentioned that it was established in 1979 under jimmy carter. i just kind of wonder, really, if you know how much input he had into the structure of the was it up toally,

someone under him? and why they made the decisions that fema become what you call a procurement agency rather than a more proactive one? guest: that's a really good question. i don't know. itiously when it was created took an act of congress. so congress was involved as well as the administration. a far as this being to call proactive agency versus an emergency response agency, that is something that fema has struggled with and congress has struggled with over the years. there has been in recent years, an effort in the agency itself and congress and everywhere to make fema -- to make it do more to encourage states, and counties, and communities to try to prevent disaster damage.

so, instead of writing checks after a community's head with a disaster, to build in incentives so that communities will do things like move homes and buildings away from flood >> we're going to take you live california.o, governor gavin newsom about to brief reporters on the coronavirus. coverage here

california is their outside a roadway hotel in sacramento briefing with reporters and it should get underway shortly and will have coverage for you here on c-span. and a briefing at 5:00 today we will have live for you as well.

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[road noise] [birds chirping] c-span.org/coronavirus >> it is noon on the west earned. gavin newsomvernor will brief reporters momentarily. coming up in two hours, the briefing from the white house, we will have that live as well. -- noon on the west coast. >> are you there?