Washington, D.C.—The following are opening remarks from Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Rick Larsen (D-WA) during today’s hearing titled, “Reforming FEMA: Ensuring the Nation’s Disaster Readiness Works for Americans.”
Video of Larsen’s opening statement is here.
More information on the hearing can be found here.
Ranking Member Larsen:
Thank you, Chairman Graves, for convening today’s hearing on FEMA reform.
I can’t overstate the importance of this hearing. The effectiveness of FEMA is a life or death matter.
FEMA did not meet the moment for a lot of disaster survivors after the Maui wildfires and Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
That was not because FEMA did not try hard enough. It was because FEMA did not have the authority it needed to help people in the best, most efficient way.
Then at the start of 2025, President Trump said we should eliminate or overhaul FEMA.
I am not aware of anyone on this committee who thinks eliminating FEMA is a good idea. That is just not a serious proposal.
But we do agree, like we have for years, that FEMA needs real reform.
That is why I was glad to team up with Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Stanton, and Rep. Webster to write the bipartisan FEMA Act.
We did not write this bill behind closed doors. We talked to more than 150 stakeholders and put out a public draft so anyone affected could weigh in.
What we ended up with is a bill that overhauls how survivors and communities get help after a disaster, facilitates investment in damage prevention, and makes FEMA an independent agency again.
In December 2025, floods hit my district and impacted over 100,000 Washingtonians.
The floods were the most expensive natural disaster the state has seen in 40 years—$182 million in damage to public infrastructure and about 4,000 homes damaged.
Since the flooding began, I have conducted 25 site visits and meetings across impacted communities, and met directly with the mayors of Whatcom and Skagit counties and emergency responders.
I have visited federally funded home-elevation projects and led direct outreach to impacted restaurants, retail stores, farms and other small businesses in Northwest Washington state.
The President did not declare a major disaster declaration until April 2026. That's when FEMA aid finally started moving.
People are grateful for the help, but it hasn't been easy.
I have heard from folks back home who are lost trying to figure out what aid they even qualify for, bouncing between FEMA, the Small Business Administration, USDA, and HUD.
Small farmers in Snohomish and Skagit County have been hit especially hard, and a lot of them are falling through the cracks.
Families are getting checks to fix their homes, but only for the damage FEMA decides makes a home unlivable. That is not the same as actually fixing what is broken.
Meanwhile, state and local governments are stuck working through a bureaucracy that can take years.
Emergency managers in Skagit County put these delays into perspective when they told me 2021 flood victims did not receive mitigation grant funds to buy out and elevate their homes until 2024. Some homes flooded again awaiting mitigation resources.
And when a family is finally approved for flood mitigation funding, they have to pay for that work themselves first and hope FEMA pays them back.
The T&I Committee did our work and passed the FEMA Act on September 3rd of last year. If it had become law then, Washington's recovery would look a lot different today.
Survivors would not have to apply to five different agencies.
There would be one universal application, and the government would do the work of matching people to the help they qualify for, instead of the other way around.
Families would be eligible for help repairing all the damage to their home, not just the damage that makes it officially "uninhabitable."
Families could get up to $43,000 to make their home stronger against the next disaster. And if a home was a total loss, families could work with FEMA to actually rebuild it.
On the public infrastructure side, state and local governments would get reimbursed within 120 days for emergency work to protect lives and property.
For permanent rebuilding—like roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals—state and local governments would get the money up front, and FEMA could only turn them down if there is evidence of fraud in their application.
States and local governments could also build mitigation into the repair work from day one. That is just common sense, and it is not something FEMA allows today.
If Washington state kept doing its part to prepare for disasters, which it has, it could get up to 85 percent of the cost to repair infrastructure covered by the federal government, freeing up state and local dollars for other investments in resilience and community services.
The FEMA Act would also let homeowners get the money up front to raise or move their homes, instead of forcing people already in crisis to pay out of pocket and hope for reimbursement later.
Washington would have steady, predictable pre-disaster mitigation funding because the FEMA Act makes BRIC a steady formula program.
And the state could combine FEMA mitigation dollars with other federal grants to take on the bigger, smarter projects we need to deal with a changing climate.
For the rest of the members on the committee, this wouldn’t apply just to my state of Washington; all this would apply to your own states, as well.
These reforms needed to be in place before the December 2025 floods.
They must be in place before the next disaster hits.
Congress has already waited a year too long.
Today we will hear from witnesses with real experience in emergency management and related industries on what this reform would mean for them.
Thank you all for being here. I look forward to your testimony.
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