Breaking: Senate Panel Wants to Abolish FEMA

10:25pm ET - CNN has just announced that a senate inquiry has concluded that FEMA should be abolished.

AP has the full story:

WASHINGTON - The nation's disaster response agency should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.
Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.

Though short on specifics, such as funding levels, the 86 proposed reforms suggest the United States is still woefully unprepared for a disaster of Katrina's magnitude.

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month investigation to be detailed in a Senate report to released next week. It follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration.
[...]
The inquiry urges yet another overhaul of the beleaguered Homeland Security Department — FEMA's parent agency — which was created three years ago and already has undergone major restructuring of duties and responsibilities.

It proposes creating a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, that would plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would have a direct line of communication with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to its budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress.

It would also oversee efforts to protect critical infrastructure such as buildings, roads and power systems, as well as Homeland Security's medical officer. But the inquiry calls for keeping the agency within Homeland Security, waning[sic] that making it an independent office would cut it off from resources the larger department could provide.

Wonderful. Right in the middle of tornado season and just before the next onslaught of hurricanes.

Maybe if Bushco had left FEMA alone and had not put it under the auspices of its cherished Homeland Security Department, it would have had a hope of actually being productive and more lives might have been saved when Hurricane Katrina hit.

What a major catastrophe - all of it.