Legislators eye agency makeover

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Lawmakers are reacting to Homeland Security's failed response to Hurricane Katrina by threatening to revamp the fledgling department just 100 days before the new storm season begins.

Some want to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and others want to elevate it to Cabinet status to answer directly to the president.

However, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says any tinkering this close to the storm season -- predicted by weather forecasters to be as severe as last year's -- would be a "big mistake."

"I want to say this in the strongest possible terms. We're coming up on hurricane season. Nature doesn't wait for us to do yet another reorganization," Mr. Chertoff said.

"If FEMA is pulled out of the Department of Homeland Security, I will predict with virtual certainty that we will be much less prepared this hurricane season than we will be if we keep the department together and finish the job of integrating it," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."

FEMA had massive help from other Homeland Security agencies, including the Coast Guard, which conducted more than 30,000 rescues in the aftermath of Katrina.

"We would lose all of that extra help if we separated FEMA out," Mr. Chertoff said.

"I think the last thing we want to do is to have a situation where we have two parallel agencies fighting over who manages a particular type of a disaster," Mr. Chertoff said.

Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, said on yesterday's political talk shows that the agency should be separated from the Homeland Security Department.

Mr. Davis, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, says the agency needs to stand alone rather than have "a bureaucratic layer reporting up through the secretary," which in the case of Katrina, "just didn't work out at all."