Bush to FEMA Law: Drop Dead!

He’s done it again: After signing into law a bill that would mandate minimum requirements for the new FEMA director, Bush added a “signing statement” in which he declared those requirements null and invalid. (more...)

You’d think that after the Mike “Heckuva Job” Brown debacle, Bush would actually take FEMA seriously—not to mention the democratic process of vetoing laws he doesn’t approve of, rather than pretending to support them in public and then cowardly gutting them with signing statements.

Boston Globe:

President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA’s poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency’s slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush’s choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management.

To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency’s director in last week’s homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ``a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management” and ``not less than five years of executive leadership.”

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From murkyview.com