FEMA needs to be empowered to act for the benefit of the people in crisis. There should, however, be strong repercussions for any FEMA agent caught wasting funds or deliberately using funds for personal gain; not excluding jail time.

It appears FEMA is already taking measures to conserve money and resources for when it is needed most. This type of regulation seems unnecessary for congress because if a disaster happens all resources needed will be given regardless.

I have no objections to reducing costs. BUT if they are doing it already, what is the point? To waste staff time and $$$ writing an annual report? This sounds like a congressional boondoggle: make a politically nasty move that makes you look manly & mean to pad the campaign account & get your rabid voters to think you actually govern....when the real agenda is to avoid doing anything useful! It appears Congress has spent 8 years doing this. Wait until you have Trump as president. You will long for the halcyon days of wasting taxpayer money & destroying the country! And you will have no one to blame but your feckless selves for this type of horrid behavior!

As disasters - both natural & human-caused - become more widespread, affect more people's lives, occur in more remote locations & there are less resources to address them, Congressional Republicans seem adamant to curtail & hamstring agencies, like FEMA, that help people, communities & even other countries throughout the world who are in their actual time of need.

So Congress wants FEMA to SAVE money on administrative costs by making them do even more reporting? There I go again, trying to apply logic to the bills our politicians propose. FACEPALM!

This is simply a Republican method to shift the burden of hurricanes, tornados, and floods from the federal government to the states, many of which are cash-strapped and completely unable to foot the bill. Louisiana tried to when Katrina struck--look what happened there.

Read the fine print: this is intended to shift the cost of transport and delivering supplies and relief to a disaster area from the FEMA to the recipients; the bill defines "administrative costs" as any cost associated with the transportation and delivery of supplies to a disaster area, EXCEPT those costs paid for by the recipients. This isn't about streamlining the agency or making anything more efficient, it is an attempt to shift costs to the people affected by the disaster. Let's look at it this way- we ALL pay taxes to the federal government so that everyone in the country can benefit from federally funded programs. FEMA gets a portion of that money, so we have all paid up front for their services (king of like paying car insurance). What this bill is doing is writing a law that says you, after already having paid for it, will now have to foot the bill to get the supplies and personnel (which you have already paid for) to where you are (a service you already paid for)- right when you are at the biggest monetary crisis you may ever face in your life. It is kind of like paying taxes to have that much needed freeway expansion then the DOT says (after it is started) "oh, by the way, you know how you already paid for that to be built and pay taxes to have it maintained? Well, we are going to let some Australian company levy a toll on it so you have to pay more money if you want to even drive in it" so you end up paying taxes for the road being built, continue paying taxes for it to be maintained, and never get to use it because you cannot afford the cost of paying some politicians' kick-back to the private company making money off it. It's kind of like that.

Shouldn't need yet another piece of legislation to enforce accountability.

So… in short… you want to create fresh administrative overhead to add to the burden while asking FEMA to reduce administrative overhead… the process of which itself is complicated because it temporarily increases costs while an organization studies needs, solutions and spends time teaching and implementing changes. NO EXTRA OVERHEAD IS REQUIRED HERE!

People don't understand the complexity of administrative responsibility when it comes to disaster management. It takes administrative staff to coordinate with local authorities, oversee the shipping of people and supplies, and ensure that the right materials are making it to the right place. Cutting administrative costs would result in lower quality disaster response.