Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act of 2012

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2903) to reauthorize the programs and activities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2903, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

H.R. 2903, the FEMA Reauthorization Act, would reauthorize FEMA and make important reforms that will save money and speed up disaster recovery. It keeps FEMA funding at current levels and fully complies with House budget rules, and it includes bipartisan provisions passed by the House last Congress. This legislation is the product of key Members working together to produce real reforms.

First, let me thank Chairman John Mica, the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, for his strong leadership and work on this legislation.

I also want to thank Ranking Member Norton, of the subcommittee, for her help in drafting legislation that protects our first responders, incorporates real reforms, and strengthens our emergency management capability.

The legislation also incorporates a top priority of the ranking member's of the full committee, Mr. Rahall's, which enables Indian tribes to request disaster declarations--provisions I support. I thank him for his work on these important provisions.

I also want to thank Chairman King of the Committee on Homeland Security and to thank Chairman Bilirakis of the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications for their leadership and working with us on the integrated public alert and warning system provisions of the bill. I look forward to working with the Committee on Homeland Security on other important issues.

Finally, I want to thank the gentlemen from New York and Missouri, Mr. Hanna and Mr. Carnahan, for their work and leadership on reauthorizing the National Dam Safety Program included in this bill.

I am also pleased that this legislation has wide support from key stakeholders representing first responders, State and local officials, tribal communities, and the private sector.

We have received letters endorsing provisions in this bill from the National Emergency Management Association, the International Association of Emergency Managers, the National Alliance of State Broadcasting Associations, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Association of Counties, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, the Disaster Recovery Contractors Association, the National Task Force Representative for the 28 sponsoring agencies of Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, and tribal communities around the Nation.

The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has a long tradition of approaching FEMA and emergency management issues in a bipartisan manner. Disasters don't follow political boundaries, and ensuring we are prepared is critical to our Nation. From major hurricanes to floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, nuclear accidents, and terrorist attacks, the costs of disasters can be significant, not just in terms of economic costs, but in the devastation to lives, homes, and communities. A good response to a disaster is critical to saving lives and minimizing damage, but recovering from such devastation is the key to rebuilding local economies and in helping people put their lives back together.

After Hurricane Katrina, Congress authorized FEMA for the first time and fundamentally reformed the Nation's disaster response system. Congress rebuilt FEMA and strengthened disaster response capabilities. We created a National Preparedness System so that States and the Federal Government will have the plans and resources in place before disaster strikes. But, as the reconstruction from Hurricane Katrina dragged on and on, it became apparent Congress needed to streamline the disaster recovery programs so communities can rebuild faster and for less money. The longer it takes to rebuild basic infrastructure after a disaster, the longer it takes for a local economy and tax base to recover and the more it costs Federal taxpayers.

The FEMA Reauthorization Act includes key reforms to save money by cutting through costly and bureaucratic red tape and speeding up reconstruction. For example, at one of our subcommittee hearings last year, the inspector general's office testified that, if FEMA just implemented the cost estimating provisions of the Disaster Mitigation Act, recovery could be sped up significantly and costs minimized.

H.R. 2903 sets deadlines for FEMA to finally implement these commonsense provisions, and it makes other changes that will save taxpayers money. This bill also would make other important reforms, including setting a clear framework for the development of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, the IPAWS system, to ensure money is not wasted.

At the committee's request, the GAO issued a report in 2009 detailing the key problems with FEMA's development of IPAWS. We also heard from many stakeholders, including the elderly, people with disabilities, as well as from industries like the commercial broadcasters and wireless industry, that FEMA was not giving them a seat at the table as FEMA modernized the system.

H.R. 2903 sets a clear framework and deadlines to ensure key stakeholders are a part of FEMA's modernization of the system. This will be critical in ensuring there are effective alerts and warnings to the public. In addition to these commonsense reforms, this reauthorizes FEMA's overall management budget, the Urban Search and Rescue System, and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

This legislation will save lives, save money, and help communities that have been devastated by disasters to recover and rebuild faster. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2903, as amended.

I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Homeland Security,

Washington, DC, September 17, 2012.

Hon. John L. Mica,

Chairman, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,

Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Mica: I am writing in regards to the

jurisdictional interest of the Committee on Homeland Security

over provisions in H.R. 2903, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of

2011, which was ordered to be reported by voice vote as

amended by the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

on March 8, 2012 and sequentially referred to the Committee

on Homeland Security on September 17, 2012.

I understand the importance of advancing this legislation

to the House floor in an expeditious manner. Therefore, the

Committee on Homeland Security will discharge H.R. 2903 from

further consideration. This action is conditional on our

mutual understanding and agreement that doing so will in no

way diminish or alter the jurisdiction of the Committee on

Homeland Security over the subject matter included in this or

similar legislation. In addition, I would like to thank you

for working with me on modifying H.R. 2903 to include

provisions that were within Chairman Bilirakis' bill, H.R.

3563, the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System

Modernization Act of 2011. I request that you urge the

Speaker to appoint members of this Committee to any

conference committee for consideration of any provisions that

fall within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Homeland

Security in the House-Senate conference on this or similar

legislation.

I also request that this letter and your response be

included during consideration of this measure on the House

floor. Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Sincerely,

Peter T. King,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon, chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Mr. Walden, for a colloquy.

Will the gentleman yield?

This bill in no way authorizes FEMA or anyone else to impose any obligations on any participant in the communications industry. Only the FCC can require a participant in the communications industry to take any action with respect to emergency-related alerts. To make this clear, we agree to add language at a later stage indicating that nothing in this bill requires or allows FEMA or any other government entity to require any action on the part of the FCC, the Department of Commerce, the Office of Energy Communications, or any nongovernment entity; nor does it have any impact on any existing obligations of these entities.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me first start by saying I am proud that we have got another bipartisan bill here that addresses many different areas from FEMA to

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the chairman for the bipartisan measures this bill contains, measures like the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System and a number of others.

I rise in support of H.R. 2903. This bipartisan measure reauthorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA; authorizes an Integrated Public Alert and Warning System; and includes many provisions that were incorporated into similar legislation in past Congresses. I am pleased to see them, once again, come to the floor. Perhaps we can get them through the House and the Senate at some point in the near future, because these are not controversial matters.

Despite our broad support for this measure, we are disappointed in the authorized levels of funding for FEMA and the disaster assistance programs. Instead of evaluating the needs of the agency and its programs and then establishing the maximum amounts that would be appropriate, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, through this bill, is essentially deferring to the Appropriations Committee to tell the authorizers how to do their jobs by only authorizing amounts equal to the last appropriated amounts.

Let me be clear, however. If we authorized the maximum that could be needed, the budget deficit would not be increased. The amount authorized merely specifies need while only the actual amounts appropriated can affect the amounts spent. It is the authorizers who are to speak to need. It is for the Members who, in fact, decide how to divide the funds, the appropriators, once the need is assessed, to decide how much the country can afford to spend. They need our expert guidance. They don't have it in this bill.

I would also like to call attention to a few important changes included in this legislation:

For example, H.R. 2903 improves many of FEMA's programs and activities, including codifying the debris removal program. The current debris removal program is based on a pilot program from several years ago. We have heard firsthand from local governments and emergency management professionals about the need to make this successful program--a program that we have already piloted--permanent to help local communities expedite recovery from disasters.

In addition, this bill addresses a long expressed concern of mine about the need to expedite FEMA's appeals process. Without firm timelines, the current appeals process has led to long and unnecessary delays in disaster closeouts. This, in turn, has prevented disaster funds obligated for a specific disaster from being deobligated and returned to the Disaster Relief Fund. Last fall, as the Disaster Relief Fund was on the brink of running out of funds, FEMA was actually able to close out several disaster accounts and find the necessary funds to finance disaster relief until Congress replenished the fund.

Moreover, timely resolution of these appeals will allow these funds to be used for infrastructure repair, which will assist the economic recovery for communities hard hit by disasters.

More than 12 years ago, Congress enacted the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, directing FEMA to begin using cost estimating for repair and reconstruction projects to expedite the recovery process and disaster closeout. Yet, today, FEMA still has not promulgated regulations to implement this provision. H.R. 2903 requires FEMA to promulgate these regulations and to implement cost estimating within 180 days of the passage of this act. We mean it this time.

This provision also will eliminate one of the most inefficient and ridiculous uses of Federal funds that I know of, one that has gotten on my last nerve, where FEMA pays not only for its own experts, but also for the States' experts, essentially encouraging the submission of competing estimates of cost repair, instead of each side deciding on a neutral party to, in fact, estimate those costs.

Finally, FEMA Administrator Fugate has requested that I note FEMA's support for section 210 of this bill, which would authorize Indian tribes to directly make a request to the President for a disaster or emergency declaration. This provision acknowledges tribal sovereignty, enhances FEMA's working relationship with the tribal governments, and improves emergency and disaster responsiveness throughout Indian Country. Numerous Indian tribes have expressed support for this provision, as has the National Congress of American Indians.

I want especially to thank the ranking member, Mr. Rahall, for his leadership on this and other issues in this bill.

Despite my concerns about the authorized amounts in this bill, H.R. 2903 is good public policy and is necessary to eliminate inefficient government actions and to expedite disaster recovery.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join in supporting this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Richardson).

I appreciate that Chairman Denham has brought this FEMA reauthorization bill to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has now gone over a couple of Congresses. The Democrats didn't get it done, and the Republicans didn't get it done. It's really too important. I hope that in the 113th Congress, this bill can be brought forward early because a lot of very good work has been done on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I regret that as we sit and think about the 112th Congress, it will be impossible to think of a single major bill passed during these 2 years. In order to pass bills, both Houses have to get together and compromise. That seems to have been impossible, at least for this House.

We are about to leave town in September with a couple of months still to go without the middle class tax cuts just when the recovery needs a boost; in the midst of a drought, without the farm bill; and without the Violence Against Women Act, which passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate. What will it take to get something done? I hope the 113th Congress proves more productive.

This has been called a do-nothing Congress. I would say this Congress has done real harm. To call it a do-nothing Congress is to give it more credit than it deserves.

This is a Congress, at least in the House, that will be remembered for having voted to end Medicare as we know it and increase the cost of healthcare for seniors by $6,400. The 112th Congress will be remembered, all right, for tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

We, in the 112th Congress, have done something amazing when you consider that we have been in a recession unheard of since the Great Depression. We have left the economy entirely to the Federal Reserve Board, to monetary policy, by abandoning the job of Congress to enact fiscal policy. There has been none in the 112th Congress that has had any effect on the economy.

No wonder. We are here for only 8 days after the August recess. If our Republican majority could have phoned in the CR, I believe they would have done it, if you look at what is on our plate as we get ready to go home.

We are going home in September leaving, unthinkably, even the major business of sequestration, the ultimate bill that was passed to force us to get together and compromise. In leaving sequestration on the table, we are leaving a bill that could collapse the entire economy. It's a fitting end for a Congress that did nothing, but in fact, did harm.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my friend and colleague from California, Chairman Denham, as well as Ranking Member Norton, for bringing this bill forward and for working with me to improve the bill.

I serve in a unique position by serving on both the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, as well as Homeland Security. Although this may not be the perfect bill, as some have articulated for the record already, I would have preferred, for example, that the bill make more explicit FEMA's authority to respond to acts of terrorism, in addition to natural disasters. Yet I believe it is necessary that we pass this bill today to ensure that the men and women of FEMA have the

resources necessary to respond to emergencies and disasters in the near future.

I rise in support of the bill, specifically to the language that I added to H.R. 2903 in committee, and I believe it's essential to the well-being of the American people. Specifically, my language, which was marked up in the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and accepted with bipartisan approval, would provide a series of checks and balances that keep the American public safe.

First, my language simply would ensure that the Department of Homeland Security coordinates and provides guidance to the appropriate individuals, officials, and organizations for outreach to individuals with disabilities during unforeseen disasters. This simple, straightforward language will help to keep the disabled, who are the most vulnerable and often times experience the greatest challenges during a time of disaster, safe during those disasters, and also from terrorist attacks.

Individuals with disabilities should feel as safe and secure in their communities and their work environments as individuals without disabilities. Too often, however, the needs of people with disabilities are not considered in emergency planning despite the fact that the need for such planning has received an increased focus due to the recent disasters--for example, Hurricane Katrina--both natural and man-made.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has stated that:

At FEMA, we need to do a better job of meeting the needs of

people with disabilities when disaster strikes. We have to

start by supporting and encouraging our entire emergency

management team, including our State and local partners, to

integrate the needs of people with disabilities into all

planning.

My language strengthens H.R. 2903 by ensuring guidance is given to the individuals with disabilities and facilitates cooperation among Federal, State, territorial, local, and tribal governments, private organizations, and individuals in the implementation of emergency preparedness plans related to individuals with disabilities.

Additionally, I included language that would make sure that the integrated public alert and warning system, IPAWS, is properly performing and that the system needs to be tested regularly. IPAWS is the generation platform for transmitting emergency alerts. I have the experience of representing in my district, the 37th Congressional District, the largest number of Samoans outside of Samoa. If we look at that particular incident, and had we had a better working system similar to what IPAWS will be able to do, I believe many lives would not have been lost.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, in November 2011, FEMA conducted a nationwide test of the emergency alert system for the first time in the system's 50-year existence. The system met with widespread problems. With the ever-changing threat to the environment and technological landscape, we cannot afford to wait 50 years to verify if IPAWS is fully performing. To do so is irresponsible. In the case of EAS tests, significant gaps in the system's ability to provide a nationwide alert were revealed for the first time.

My language seeks to make sure that IPAWS in the future is regularly tested and to encourage the administrator of FEMA to test the system at least once every 3 years.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the language that I submitted was accepted in a bipartisan way, strengthens this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to support the bill as a whole.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2903, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of 2012, and particularly section 102, which authorizes the integrated public alert and warning system.

Section 102 is very similar to H.R. 3563, legislation that I introduced last year to authorize IPAWS, as we call it, which was reported by the Committee on Homeland Security in March. The bill authorizes FEMA's efforts to provide timely emergency alerts and warnings through a range of alerting mechanisms and forms of technology. Emergency management officials, including officials in my home State of Florida, have stressed the value and importance of IPAWS to me personally.

The National Emergency Management Association has publicly supported my IPAWS legislation, and I'm pleased to see they support this bill as well.

The Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications, which I chair, has conducted robust oversight of the IPAWS program during the 112th Congress, having held multiple hearings and a briefing on the topic.

I want to thank Chairman Denham for working with me and my staff to incorporate some of the provisions of my bill that were a product of this oversight into the legislation we are considering today, including language related to individuals with disabilities, access and functional needs, language ensuring the protection of individual privacy, and language regarding the resilience of the system.

I'm disappointed, however, that language I suggested to include a specific reference of the system's applicability to acts of terrorism was not incorporated into the bill. However, I look forward to working with Chairman Denham and our Senate colleagues as this bill moves through the legislative process to clarify this issue.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill.

I thank the chairman, and I thank my good friend from California for his terrific work on this bipartisan piece of legislation which is very important to the citizens of this country.

I also want to thank you for this colloquy.

I plan to support your bill, obviously. I think it's a good bill. I just want to clarify because I'm concerned that the language in section 102 of the bill could be construed as authorizing the imposition of requirements on the communications sector. Can you assure me that this is not the effect of this language?

I yield to the gentleman.

I appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I welcome and thank you for them.