Craig Fugate:
Well, it depends on where the money is being cut.
A lot of this is going to be in preparedness activities, training funds, grants that went to state and local governments. And you need to remember, a lot of these funds were created in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
And so, as we have built the capabilities to respond to greater events, including terrorist events, we have gone through several phases of reduced funding. When I was at FEMA, we went through reduced funding during sequestration and reduced funding. This would continue that trend.
Again, this is policy. This is something that Congress ultimately has to decide. And, ultimately, the question will be, if we reduce the funding for preparedness activities, what does that mean to be able to respond and recover from disasters, especially since there’s a lot of discussion about moving more of the reoccurring routine disasters back to the state and local governments to manage, with FEMA being primarily for the larger catastrophic disaster responses?
