The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) has called on Congress to pass the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act, H.R. 4669, telling lawmakers that federal disaster policy needs a stronger focus on prevention rather than just response.
Brian Waller, vice president of external relations for Columbia, Missouri-based Shelter Insurance, testified on behalf of NAMIC before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week. He said emergency management works best when all stakeholders focus on reducing risk to communities before and after storms strike, pointing to the insurance industry's long history of advancing pre-disaster mitigation investment to harden homes and infrastructure against increasingly severe weather.
Waller's testimony highlighted the scale of FEMA's current backlog, citing more than 600 open disaster declarations dating back to 2020 and nearly $10 billion in unresolved disaster-related reimbursement requests and grant programs, with thousands of individual assistance requests still stuck in bureaucratic delays. A recent Bipartisan Policy Center analysis similarly found FEMA managing more than 300,000 projects across those open declarations with a smaller workforce, after the agency absorbed roughly a 14% staffing reduction since January 2025.
Waller argued that FEMA's paperwork and reimbursement processes have left disaster victims waiting far too long for resolution. The FEMA Act would address both sides of that equation, he said, by improving mitigation grant programs, establishing a task force to clear the declarations backlog, expediting infrastructure repairs and simplifying the disaster aid application process.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the FEMA Act in September 2025 by a 57-3 vote, and the bill has since drawn 87 bipartisan co-sponsors, according to the Congressional Research Service. It has not yet received a floor vote, and companion legislation has not been introduced in the Senate. The legislation would restructure FEMA as an independent, Cabinet-level agency outside the Department of Homeland Security, diverging from the FEMA Review Council's own recommendations, which favored keeping the agency within DHS in a reformed capacity.
That legislative stall has coincided with fresh operational pressure on the agency itself. FEMA has faced added strain from a record 76-day DHS shutdown that cut off its annual appropriations until the Fiscal Year 2026 DHS Appropriations Act passed on April 30, 2026. That legislation replenished FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund with $26.4 billion and rejected further staffing cuts, though DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said the shutdown's operational damage will take months to resolve.
"Emergency management is at its best when all stakeholders are laser-focused on helping affected communities by bending the risk curve before and after storms," Waller told the committee. He added that the bill's provisions would give lawmakers a chance to provide meaningful, lasting help to Americans affected by future disasters.
Jimi Grande, NAMIC's senior vice president of federal and political affairs, said the hearing should help build momentum for the bill to move forward. "The longer Congress waits, the more Americans are put at risk," he said.
With the committee having already advanced the bill by a wide bipartisan margin, the central question is no longer whether H.R. 4669 has support, but whether House leadership will bring it to the floor before the next disaster season tests FEMA's backlog further.
