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Additional Views

Senator Tom Coburn, M.D.

I commend the Committee Chairman, Ranking Member, and investigative staff for their 

arduous investigation into the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the work that went into the 

voluminous Report. To a large extent, this Report provides a detailed account of the events 

leading up to, during and aft er the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. I am concerned, however, 

that the main recommendation of the Report – to abolish FEMA and reconstitute it as the 

National Preparedness and Response Authority – does not adequately address the root cause 

of the disaster. Th at root cause, in my view, was a lack of accountability for performance 

(both before and aft er the hurricane), rather than a fl awed organizational or management 

structure. I would argue that by overemphasizing organizational change rather than performance improvement, these somewhat confl icting recommendations miss the point.

Misplaced Focus: Organization v. Outcomes

Th e Report recommendations focus on micromanaging the “how” and “who” of emergency 

preparedness and response rather than the “what.” Rearranging organization and prescribing 

certain qualities for, tasks of, and relationships between managers, and creating new teams 

and task forces, is not the appropriate role of Congress. We should ensure that taxpayers are 

getting the “product” they pay for with tax revenues, rather than dictating the specifi cs of 

how it is obtained. In other words, the Report recommendations should have focused more 

on developing an accountability system based on meeting actual preparedness and response 

indicators and benchmarks as a condition for receiving federal, state or local funds, using 

whatever management and organizational structures are preferred by a given President, 

Governor, and Mayor or County Executive. Diff erent Executives will naturally have diff erent personalities, management styles and operating procedures. Th ey should be permitted to 

operate and organize in whatever lawful manner they choose. Th e key matter of importance 

to the Congress is that they deliver the level of performance on pre-legislated preparedness 

and response outcomes, improving aft er each exercise and real-life emergency. 

Th e Committee’s investigation did not adequately address this aspect of accountability for 

performance over the long term. It uncovered the symptoms of the disease rather than the 

disease itself. I would argue that under-funding of emergency-planning activities is not a root 

cause, but rather, the result of consistent inattention to meeting emergency-planning goals.

Lack of oversight by accountable government offi cials, including Congress, is the reason 

behind any funding defi ciency. When elected offi cials fail to recognize a dangerous lack of 

readiness, they are unlikely to have either the political will to increase funding or the attention span required to identify which underperforming functions require a redirection of 

existing funding streams. Perhaps, if adequate oversight were being performed, it would have 

been recognized that funding levels were saturated in some areas, but that more important 

or worse-performing areas needed targeted funding redirection. A non-specifi c accusation of 

“under-funding” does not explain why nobody with the power of the purse at the local, state, 

or federal level noticed that preparedness was not being achieved, or if it was noticed, nobody took the steps necessary to remedy the situation. Funding was provided over a period 

of years to achieve preparedness, but it took the massive real-life test of Hurricane Katrina to 

expose what should have been exposed and fi xed by simulated or smaller-scale real-life tests 

such as the 2004 Florida hurricane season or the Hurricane Pam simulated exercise. 

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I believe that the reason why preparedness was not achieved is that measurable indicators 

of that preparedness were not demanded at any level of government by elected offi cials. If 

preparedness is operationalized using measurable indicators (such as performance during 

drills, testing of communications equipment and systems, testing of staff on certain aspects 

of a plan, and actual performance during smaller disasters), then offi cials have a way of targeting funds to where they are most needed, or conditioning funds on actual performance. 

Instead, the usual process involves automatic funding every year without any reference 

to what the American people are getting for those dollars. I suspect that Americans don’t 

care how the Department of Homeland Security delivers adequate disaster planning and 

response; they simply want the Department to deliver at the point of crisis. Congress should 

take the same approach. A useful model can be found in New Zealand, which reorganized 

its federal legislative and oversight approach during the 1980s and 1990s to become entirely 

outcomes-focused, conditioning funding on performance on certain outcomes that were 

legislated in advance. Th e result was radical improvement in federal performance.

Misplaced Focus: Timeframe

Another weakness of the Report is the timeframe of its focus, which may be why the recommendations miss the mark. Th e primary failure of all levels of government in the Katrina 

disaster occurred years before landfall, and no amount of brilliant performance immediately before or aft er the hurricane would have overcome that neglect. Th at the performance 

wasn’t satisfactory (far from it) is indeed relevant to the observed outcomes, but only marginally so. It should hardly have been the primary focus of the report and its recommendations. Th ere is simply only so much a local, state, or federal government, with its layers of 

bureaucracies, rules, regulations, and systems, can do to help people during a disaster if 

the years of planning and drilling (until all systems and plans have been demonstrably and 

measurably tested) have been neglected. 

As a primary example, the report acknowledges that without the breaking of the levee, 

most of the signifi cant problems would have had far less of an impact on the city of New 

Orleans. Yet, the problems with the city’s levee system go back 40 years or more. In fact, the 

very likelihood of a situation exactly like the one that occurred was predicted for decades by 

experts inside and outside the government. While it is keenly important to obtain the lessons learned from those that commanded the response and recovery activities, it is far more 

important to understand the long-term failures to prepare for this event. 

Misplaced Focus: Expectations of Federal Government

Finally, the Report places too much blame on “last responders” in this disaster, that is, the 

federal government. Unwieldy, distant, slow, and ineffi cient by nature, the federal government is rightly the responder of last resort to any disaster. However, as the biggest source of 

funding for local and state preparedness activities, the federal government has the critical 

obligation to serve as a quality-assurance monitor in advance of any disaster. It is essential 

that the federal government conduct thorough, regular, and well-publicized oversight of 

state, local, and federal offi cials’ performance, to observe whether they are performing in 

a way that reduces the need for a massive federal engagement following an emergency. If 

performance is substandard, then the well-publicized nature of such oversight can serve to 

generate public demand and political will for the conditioning of funds and other “tough 

love” measures that may be the only means of motivating improvement. 

Given that the federal government is not designed to be a fast or fi rst responder in a disaster, any federal bail-out of states and localities in a disaster would itself be a disaster. Th at 

means that the best and most eff ective federal role is to demand excellence, indeed, to condition funding on it, over the years prior to a disaster, ensuring that state and local offi cials 

are so prepared as to preempt the need for federal intervention, and certainly to preempt 

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the need for quick and effi cient intervention. Th at the federal government had to take over 

Hurricane Katrina recovery and response, rather than simply help coordinate it, represents 

the real tragedy of the Katrina narrative. Th e Report fails to recognize the inherent inability 

of the federal government to respond well in a situation like this and instead castigates it for 

being what it must be: a large, slow bureaucracy. 

Conclusion

Th e Congress oft en resorts to rearranging agencies in reaction to disasters and then criticizing the very agencies they organized and oversaw for being organized poorly. Th e Department of Homeland Security itself was the product of Congressional bureaucratic reshuffl ing 

aft er 9/11. Perhaps the problem is not fl awed federal organization, but fl awed oversight 

by local, state, and federal legislative and executive offi cials. All Americans, especially the 

victims of Hurricane Katrina, deserve better from us in the future.

Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared