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December 9, 2025
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been synonymous with federal disaster response for 45 years. President Jimmy Carter created the then-cabinet-level agency via executive order in 1979, and gave it a dual mission of emergency response and civil defense. In 1988, the agency took on a statutory mandate to respond to presidential disaster declarations, and in 2003 it was moved under the newly created Department of Homeland Security, where it sits today. In the years since, the need to address an increasing number of major disasters has forced FEMA to become more streamlined while taking on a wider jurisdiction. In more recent years, disaster survivors and stakeholder organizations have been demanding a more accessible, centralized, and mitigation-focused approach from the agency.
The Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act (H.R.4669), which passed out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with amendments on September 3, 2025, endeavors to meet these demands without eliminating the agency as we know it. The bill was introduced by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. It aims to make what several committee members described as long-overdue reforms to the U.S. disaster assistance process.
The FEMA Act would streamline disaster aid by pulling FEMA out from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); establish a universal disaster aid application for individuals (as opposed to the current patchwork system); make disaster assistance for governments grant-based rather than reimbursement-based so that the funds flow faster in times of crisis; establish a public grant transparency dashboard; and incentivize non-federal disaster mitigation efforts. During the September 3 Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup, Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) noted that the FEMA Act “hits the largest pain points that we have heard from our states, localities, professional emergency managers, and more.” Below follows a deep dive into a few of the most notable reforms in the bipartisan bill and what they would mean for disaster-impacted communities should it be signed into law.
The bill would once again make FEMA an independent cabinet-level agency accountable directly to the president instead of a program under DHS. Potential benefits of this change, cited by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, include budget and hiring independence, improved credibility, and faster decision-making inside FEMA because administrators would no longer have to go through DHS higher-ups for approval.
In the aftermath of disaster, survivors are faced with piles of paperwork, especially if they seek assistance from the federal government. As Rep. Stanton stated during the bill’s markup, “the last thing a person wants to do when suffering the loss of family or property from disaster is more paperwork.” Depending on the nature of the disaster (disasters may be “natural” like hurricanes, or “human-caused” like oil spills and terrorist attacks), survivors may be eligible for assistance from nine different agencies, including FEMA. In an attempt to streamline disaster assistance, Section 202 of the FEMA Act would require the agency to “develop and establish a universal application for direct federal disaster assistance for individuals.” One application for all types of federal disaster assistance would prevent survivors from having to duplicate basic information across many different forms.
The FEMA Act would also require the agency to publish a public “Individual Assistance Dashboard” no later than 90 days after a given disaster (Sec. 432). To increase transparency, oversight, and equity, the dashboard would show the number of current applications for assistance for the disaster, as well as approvals, denials, reasons for denial, and dollar amounts awarded by income group.
Currently, the federal government reimburses individuals and local, tribal, and state governments for “time and materials” associated with disaster recovery expenses such as emergency temporary lodging for survivors. Many Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members cited the long wait times their states, local governments, and constituents had experienced for post-disaster reimbursements as a key reason for their urgency in pushing the FEMA Act forward. Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.) explained:
“More than 20 years after Katrina, many people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast are still battling with FEMA. It's not just Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, or Hattiesburg. More are also waiting for cases to be resolved.”
In terms of individual disaster assistance, the universal application portal is intended to speed along FEMA payouts. For government entities (including local governments that have provided resources to survivors), the FEMA Act would instead implement a grant-based model based on an “engineer-certified cost estimate” conducted after disasters, which would become the “binding grant amount” for the entity in question, according to an analysis by the law firm Baker-Donelson. Grant recipients would be able to request a one-time readjustment for up to two years after their initial grant award to recalibrate for increased costs of labor or materials due to subsequent market conditions.
Additionally, the FEMA Act would allow states and tribal leaders to request flexible block grants for small disasters equal to 80% of the estimated recovery cost for the disaster, instead of going through the process of applying to the Public Assistance Program (Sec. 801). Block grants allow states and tribes to decide how to allocate their awards (though the award amount is still determined by the federal government), reducing “transactional friction” for relatively minor disasters.
For some expenditures, such as state, local, and tribal spending on temporary post-disaster housing for emergency responders, federal reimbursements will remain the mode of assistance. For these remaining reimbursement cases, the money would have to be distributed no later than 120 days after the request is submitted, if at least 90% of the estimated costs are eligible. For open disasters, pending applications could be transferred into the new grant process or be completed under legacy rules up until December 31, 2032.
The FEMA Act would penalize unpreparedness and reward preparedness on the part of state and tribal governments. While the federal government would continue to cover 75% of costs in most cases, that figure could be reduced to as low as 65% for states and tribes that have failed to take disaster mitigation measures, and raised to up to 85% if a jurisdiction has strong mitigation practices in place. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) called the 85% cost-share measure as written “a major boost for expensive—and they're very expensive—shoreline projects.” He added:
“In southern New Jersey alone, and in coastal communities nationwide, healthy beaches and strong dunes are our first line of defense against devastating major storms. It's called public safety.”
Section 301 of the Act requires a state or tribal government to submit a preapproved project mitigation plan within 3 years of the bill’s enactment to be eligible for the 85% federal cost-share. Jurisdictions that do not submit mitigation plans within three years automatically forfeit eligibility for the 85% federal cost share. The mitigation plans must include a list of projects within the state or jurisdiction that aim to reduce damage induced by natural disasters (Sec. 301). Each state would need to present at least one project per county (or else provide written explanation as to why a given county lacks a mitigation project), a description of project benefits, and an estimated cost.
Between the lines of this bill, an identifiable pattern emerges: giving states and tribal nations more funding predictability. This effort is behind the new block grant model and pre-approval of mitigation projects, along with the transformation of the recently-canceled Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program into a formula-based allocation rather than one based on competition between communities. Reincarnating BRIC as a non-competitive program could level the playing field between states with plenty of resources to apply for federal funds and states with more limited resources. (The National Resources Defense Council’s Joel Scata discussed this proposal and more at our Rapid Readout on FEMA.)
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Community-Level Adaptation and Funding
To hear more about the need for community disaster resilience and mitigation funding, check out The Climate Conversation podcast episode "Community-Level Climate Resilience and Adaptation Funding in Action."
An amendment added during the committee markup of the FEMA Act includes a measure supporting state and local capacity-building by encouraging the use of regional and local contractors when it comes to disaster response and recovery services. An additional amendment would eliminate a rule that defines state risk-management funds as a duplication of federal benefits or as “insurance.” This current rule punishes states that are better prepared for disaster by giving them less federal funding, creating a perverse incentive to reduce preparedness. Both changes are included in the latest post-markup version of the bill (as of this writing).
FEMA typically requires the communities it helps to cover a portion of their disaster recovery costs with non-federal funds. This can be very challenging for small or poor communities with few resources. Some stakeholder groups, such as the Appalachian Flood Policy Coalition, have suggested that the bill also reduce or eliminate these matching requirements for economically distressed communities, calling any requirement for non-federal matching “a monumental challenge that limits access to public assistance.” So far, such an amendment has not made it into the bill.
Throughout the markup, members noted that stripping down or eliminating FEMA’s role in disaster assistance would not be a solution to the agency’s longstanding bureaucratic issues. A statement on the FEMA Act from the Association of State Floodplain Managers similarly emphasizes the necessity of a federal disaster response system: “Although capable states and communities can and should shoulder more responsibility, FEMA’s leadership and resources will always be necessary, particularly for catastrophic disasters. Any reform or budgetary decision must preserve, and ideally enhance, FEMA’s customer service capacity and ensure the agency is equipped to support the nation in times of greatest need.”
Author: Hannah Wilson-Black
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