fugate. thank you. >> i would like now to welcome senator roger wicker from mississippi, our banking committee colleague to the committee. senator wicker has switched seats temporarily to testify before the committee. senator wicker, welcome. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman and mr. ranking member and senator tester. i have a a written statement, which i will not read in its entirety and ask that it be included in the record at this point. >> thank you. >> i would also notice that the states of montana and south dakota have sent a great deal of water down our way this year which we are experiencing right now. only enforces the fact that we are all in this together and we need a multi year reauthorization and i'm here today to agree with members of the committee in that respect and to speak for a few moments about my proposal, which i'm calling the coastal act. you were kind enough to let me testify last year before i became a member of this committee, to sort of talk about the unique pers

welcome, administrator fugate.ceed with your testimony. >> thank you, chairman johnson, and members of the committee. i have submitted written testimony for the record. i will proceed with a brief statement. i think senator shelby summed up the structural issues we are faced with this flood insurance program. i think one of the things i like to emphasize here is as the program exists now it is unlikely we can retire the $18 billion debt. i see that increasing with a large scale hurricane or tsunami event. i think we do a much better job with river flooding in determining how to manage that risk. in these larger scale events, there are structural issues within the program that produced high vulnerabilities that are not addressed in the current system. so how do we address that risk? i think one of the issues that we see and we agree with -- this risk should be better shared with the private sector versus strictly looking at a taxpayer- run system. i believe there are policies that could be moved to the private secto

. >> reporter: that was the fema director craig if you -- craig fugate.ack to you. >> thank you. >>> 8:14. this morning, president obama meets with house republican leaders at the white house about what it would take for republicans to support raising the national debt limit. that's after the house voted against an increase jade. republicans jade -- increase yesterday. republicans say they will only vote for a bill like that if it includes spending cuts. >>> egypt's news state agency is reporting that hosni mubarak and his sons will go on trial august 3rd. mubarak will be charged with corruption and killing demonstrators who tried to force him out of trier last february. he could get the death penalty if convicted. his sons face charges of abusing power to make themselves wealthy. in. >>> in japan, a opposition -- >>> in japan, on opposition parties submitted -- opposition parties smitted a no-confidence vote and want the prime minister to resign. the prime minister rejected that. >>> a group of senior citizens -- is offering to work at the damaged plant.

>> the quote fugate is reminiscent to the meaningful use rule which the hhs proposed a while back. >> and there are problems with that, too aren't there? >> we are hearing about those problems with the meaningful use role. >> and can potentially of -- >> are we going to speed the process of? >> i would like nothing -- >> how we help to speed that process up? >> there are two things. first, this very hearing in your interest in making sure what is on the plans are not implemented already or are not on each fast-track that they are implemented in a hurry. your ideas what should be on the plan that aren't on the plan are very welcome with respect to that the rule is you raise i said is a little pitiful. >> should we retrieve the rulemaking authority and address it still charlie? >> i would say the act has a mechanism and the word proposed not just because i recently married but also because the fundamentally constructive nature of proposed rules or interim final where you get a chance for people to fix things. i've heard the concerns to which you point and our role will be trying to addr

they came an hour ago, made introductions, and craig fugate came in and the deputy director, so everybody needs to keep joplin in their prayers, and i very much appreciate the attitude. the president came in on sunday, and i was thrilled with that because he got to see with his own eyes so if you can take the message to fema, we appreciate what they are doing. >> thank you, mr. long. .. resolution today into the issue is of blood mass destruction weapons to the whether it be a chemical weapons , and so i would ask that all three agencies represented here today both the hs, department of state and department of defense fully comply with the law which band update these reports in a more comprehensive way as soon as possible so congress can do its job for the american people. the job of the committee is to protect the american people and without that information we cannot adequately do our jobs. so i would ask you go back to your boss and tell them we needed that information as soon as possible. we will dismiss this panel of witnesses. i want to thank you for your testimony and expertise and

fugate now being head of fema coming from florida. we know how to do it at the ground level. we make good decisions. we work with our partners but we work with our state partners to make those critical online decisions. this process was dysfunctional and broken. >> and stafford is clearly better? >> yes, sir. it gives the local government the ability to pull in the resources as necessary but to make on the ground feel decisions that we can intimate immediately. we had to go through and approval process to give a very poor analogy, like go ask your mom, go ask your debt. and i never could get a straight answer. it is a system that i think this group particularly in congress has to look at. there are lessons in homeland security. there are lessons as the governor indicated earlier. if we go off of cuba, china, et cetera, as bad as that was without a responsible party, where would we be? multi-jurisdictional lines has to be charge. one point i would like to me, i came a few months ago during the national association of counties, and met with intergovernmental affairs and request

to that end, i'm already meeting with the director of fema, craig fugate this afternoon. we must be committed to that process to help all we can, both in this flood fight and in the ensuing recovery. it's been a real challenge this year as you look around the country, as you look around our state, the flooding i described here in minot but throughout our state and as you look around the country with flooding, up and down the missouri, up and down the mississippi and you look at the tornadoes and now the fires that are occurring in the southwest. this really has been a tough year. it's a challenging year. and so we need to pull together and we need to help each other, and i know we will because that's the american way. that's the way we have always done it, and i know that we'll be there to help each other, to help our citizens in minot, in the minot region, throughout the state of north dakota, but in other places around the country as well. as i say, that's the american way, and we will prevail in this endeavor. i thank you, mr. president, for the time. at this time i yi

>> the quote fugate is reminiscent to the meaningful use rule which the hhs proposed a while back. >> and there are problems with that, too aren't there? >> we are hearing about those problems with the meaningful use role. >> and can potentially of -- >> are we going to speed the process of? >> i would like nothing -- >> how we help to speed that process up? >> there are two things. first, this very hearing in your interest in making sure what is on the plans are not implemented already or are not on each fast-track that they are implemented in a hurry. your ideas what should be on the plan that aren't on the plan are very welcome with respect to that the rule is you raise i said is a little pitiful. >> should we retrieve the rulemaking authority and address it still charlie? >> i would say the act has a mechanism and the word proposed not just because i recently married but also because the fundamentally constructive nature of proposed rules or interim final where you get a chance for people to fix things. i've heard the concerns to which you point and our role will be trying to addr

secretary napolitano and administrator fugate testified to this need earlier this year in our appropriations hearings. i am proposing a waiver amendment which would save thousands of firefighter jobs. right now the real challenge to community safety is not the reluctance of local governments to hire new fire personnel, it's the potential and actual layoffs of public safety personnel which means fewer first responders, longer response times, and more lives being put at risk. this amendment also continues the provision that waives certain budgetary requirements local fire departments have to fill in order to receive a grant. these include not allowing a fire department's overall budget to drop below a certain level, not reducing staff over a number of years even if budgets continue to suffer, and providing local matching funds. again, these provisions are fine when local coffers are healthy but we all know how strapped our cities and counties are right now. so in the current environment, the current economic environment, very few municipalities would be able to meet these requirements, jobs wo

within hours fema administrator craig fugate was on the scene to survey the widespread damage. the emergency disaster declaration and the major disaster declaration were approved within hours. i also want to thank homeland security secretary janet napolitano, h.u.t. secretary shawn donovan and tom vilsack and s.b.a. administrator karen mills for traveling to my district days later. as a result of the april tornados, 67 lives were lost in my district alone and in the state of alabama, 238 people lost their lives. i want to extend my deepest condolences to those who lost their loved ones. i want to thank all the first responders who were on the scene to help so many of the victims. i also want to thank the volunteers who continue to work tirelessly to restore the lives of families who lost all that they had. the destruction and loss of lives has been absolutely heartbreaking. but out of this tragedy, we will triumph. we will recover, rebuild, and restore our communities. we will be better and stronger than before. i am inspired every day by the resilience take my district in the

>> the quote fugate is reminiscent to the meaningful use rule which the hhs proposed a while back. >> and there are problems with that, too aren't there? >> we are hearing about those problems with the meaningful use role. >> and can potentially of -- >> are we going to speed the process of? >> i would like nothing -- >> how we help to speed that process up? >> there are two things. first, this very hearing in your interest in making sure what is on the plans are not implemented already or are not on each fast-track that they are implemented in a hurry. your ideas what should be on the plan that aren't on the plan are very welcome with respect to that the rule is you raise i said is a little pitiful. >> should we retrieve the rulemaking authority and address it still charlie? >> i would say the act has a mechanism and the word proposed not just because i recently married but also because the fundamentally constructive nature of proposed rules or interim final where you get a chance for people to fix things. i've heard the concerns to which you point and our role will be trying to addr

fugate now being head of fema coming from florida. we know how to do it at the ground level. we make good decisions. we work with our partners but we work with our state partners to make those critical online decisions. this process was dysfunctional and broken. >> and stafford is clearly better? >> yes, sir. it gives the local government the ability to pull in the resources as necessary but to make on the ground feel decisions that we can intimate immediately. we had to go through and approval process to give a very poor analogy, like go ask your mom, go ask your debt. and i never could get a straight answer. it is a system that i think this group particularly in congress has to look at. there are lessons in homeland security. there are lessons as the governor indicated earlier. if we go off of cuba, china, et cetera, as bad as that was without a responsible party, where would we be? multi-jurisdictional lines has to be charge. one point i would like to me, i came a few months ago during the national association of counties, and met with intergovernmental affairs and request

to femme mavment greg flynn, a spoarksman with the mississippi emergency management agency said of fugate, "fema is extraordinarily proactive for the states. by the time the storm is out of the way, they want to know what we need." madam president, this is very good testimony, because we worked hard. many of us -- you worked hard on this, i did, and others -- to make a stronger fema, a more proactive fema and i think this big measure we've accomplished that. but the biggest challenge right now is, unless the senate and the house and the president do something differently, we are not going to have the money we need to take care of these disasters. and so for people on the ground like david maxwell in arkansas and greg flynn in mississippi and whether it's paul rainwater, who is the c.e.o. of my state and still struggling in the aftermath of katrina and rita, which was six years ago, but a disaster that's still open, we literally are going to run out of money in the disaster emergency relief fund january of this year. so let me put up a chart to show the challenge that's before us. we have