President Donald Trump is planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency after this year’s hurricane season. On Tuesday, he said he wants to bring FEMA down to the state level and let governors handle it.
Trump added that the federal government will start distributing less federal aid for disaster recovery.
“We’re going to give out less money. We’re going to give it out directly. It’ll be from the president’s office. We’ll have somebody here; could be Homeland Security, but we’re going to give it out through a method,” President Trump said.
He added that if a state’s governor cannot handle a disaster, “Maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”
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Plans to eliminate FEMA have baffled federal and state emergency managers, who say most states don’t have the budget or personnel to handle catastrophic disasters on their own.
“We’ll be working on reforms and what FEMA will look like in the future as a different agency as under the Department of Homeland Security to the president vision and it will empower governors to go out and respond to emergency situations and that what the president does best is to make sure that the taxpayers are only fulfilling the need to which is appropriate and that people are responsible to respond to their own people closest to home,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters on Tuesday.
