FEMA Act of 2025 Would Restore Agency’s Cabinet-Level Status, Streamline Disaster Response
The bipartisan FEMA Act of 2025 (H.R. 4669), introduced July 24, proposes the most sweeping legislative reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and federal disaster assistance programs in decades.
According to the press release from Transportation and Infrastructure Committee leaders, the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act of 2025 streamlines the federal government’s disaster response and recovery programs while also making FEMA a cabinet-level agency once again that is directly accountable to the President. The bill rewards effective state and local preparedness, protects taxpayers, cuts red tape, and ensures that relief efforts are fast, fair, and free from political bias.
“The American people need an emergency management system that works quickly and effectively, not one that makes disaster recovery more difficult,” said Chairman Sam Graves. “But time and time again, we’ve heard the same story from state and local officials, emergency managers, and disaster victims: the federal process is too slow, complicated, and disconnected from the realities on the ground. Communities trying to rebuild are forced to navigate a maze of complicated rules, conflicting timelines, and mountains of burdensome paperwork. FEMA is in need of serious reform, and the goal of the FEMA Act of 2025 is to fix it. This bill does more than any recent reforms to cut through the bureaucracy, streamline programs, provide flexibility, and return FEMA to its core purpose of empowering the states to lead and coordinating the federal response when it’s needed.”
At its core, the legislation aligns with ASFPM priorities—strengthening FEMA, expanding hazard mitigation, and building state and local capacity. In our comments to the FEMA Review Council in May, we urged restoring FEMA’s independence as a Cabinet-level agency and incentivizing state and local leadership in hazard mitigation.
ASFPM welcomes the introduction of this legislation and the chance to work toward meaningful reform that will reduce flood losses nationwide. We’ll have more details in the Aug. 15 issue of News & Views after we’ve had a chance to review the bill in its entirety.
Read more about the bill, including a section-by-section summary and the full text.