I sure hope Elon and Vivek dismantle FEMA. It’s an argument of local disaster response readiness and federal disaster response funding.

Here’s how I’ve looked at catastrophic emergency response, going back to Hurricane Katrina where the failure of Mayor Nagin to have a city disaster plan killed hundreds, and the four days it took for FEMA to arrive.

Scenario: If I’ve got a pothole in my street, am I going to wait weeks for a federal agency in DC to fix it? No. That’s stupid. It’s a local issue most efficiently and immediately resolved by local resources and local readiness. It’s up to the locals to have a pothole repair plan and the infrastructure to repair the pothole. A single pothole is easily funded and repaired without federal involvement.

What happens when there are suddenly and unexpectedly thousands of potholes not only on my street but across the whole city? These potholes are paralyzing the city. That’s now overwhelming to local resources and where federal resources can supplement. Do we need the feds to come repair thousands of potholes? Nope. It’s still most efficiently and immediately handled on the local level.

The local resource that’s overwhelmed is funding.

This is where the feds can be useful. What the feds can do is fund the repair. And that’s it. An agency like FEMA has a federal checkbook and that’s the end of their involvement. FEMA has no expertise or authority beyond that.

And we really don’t need a bloated, useless bureaucratic agency like FEMA at all. We need an office in Treasury to handle catastrophic disaster financial assistance. Hurricane Helene proves this. Locals are best equipped for catastrophic disaster response needing only emergency funding.

This is the proper disaster response structure and the proper role of the federal government in disaster response. Just write the checks when requested and let the locals take the lead.

Bye bye, FEMA.