Perry, White Slam FEMA

HoustonChronicle.com - Perry, White thrash FEMA

Gee, you mean it's not just Democratic Governors that realize FEMA is a craphole of ineptitude after the Clinton years?

Gov. Rick Perry and Houston Mayor Bill White on Tuesday separately criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency's continued hurricane recovery efforts in Texas and Houston.

In a sharply worded letter, Perry protested FEMA's decision to cut recovery funding to Texas, said tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees soon will soon be evicted from temporary housing with no place to go and said FEMA has been slow to identify sex offenders and other violent criminals among Katrina evacuees.

He also said in his letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, sent one day before Chertoff is scheduled to speak in Houston, that FEMA was treating Texas victims of Hurricane Rita differently from Louisiana victims.

The lack of work done in East Texas and other locations hit hardest by Rita are the second shoe dropping on FEMA's woes. That's not, as our Republican friends like to suggest, a failure of government in the abstract. That's a failure of George Bush's government. No other way to write that off.