Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate committee Thursday that making the Federal Emergency Management Agency an independent agency would cost billions of dollars, create a “schizophrenic” response to future disasters, and roll back progress made since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Chertoff argued at a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the government’s failures to respond appropriately to Hurricane Katrina last year were caused in part by the agency attempting to act independently, and laid the blame squarely on former FEMA head Michael Brown.

Lawmakers are considering competing proposals on what to do with FEMA, with one proposal to make it an independent, Cabinet-level agency, and another proposal to reorganize it into a directorate within the Department of Homeland Security.

Chertoff’s appearance before the Senate struck a nerve in the House. Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Transportation and Infrastructure Economic Development Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa. — sponsors of the bill to remove FEMA from the department — issued a statement late Wednesday in response to Chertoff’s prepared testimony (PDF) for the Senate hearing.

“To say Katrina’s lessons learned merely point to a minor personnel problem is like attributing the Black Plague to a few rats,” they said. “On the theory that all essential elements of the national response must be within DHS to function, half of Health and Human Services and large chunks of the Defense Department should be moved into DHS as well.”

Chertoff said the argument being made by Davis and Shuster was “completely illogical.” — CongressDaily

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who supports making FEMA an independent agency, noted that no witnesses at the hearing also supported making it independent, and called for another hearing with witnesses who do support the idea.

FEMA’s initial response to Hurricane Katrina was one snafu after another, with the agency simultaneously not helping victims and actively blocking anyone else who wanted to help, and squabbling with state and local governments over who was supposed to do what. Many of the issues of who is supposed to do what among the local, state and federal levels remain unresolved, and FEMA remains poorly prepared for the next disaster.