Washington, DC – Speaking from the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Mark Dayton explained his lone dissenting vote against approval of the final report on the federal government’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina. Dayton is a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which released the Katrina Report last week. The Minnesota Senator, who released his “dissenting views” on the report Tuesday, said the document was incomplete, because it lacked key documents and testimony from Bush Administration officials, which the White House refused to provide. Dayton blamed partisan politics for the missing information, and charged that the Committee had failed in its oversight responsibility by not subpoenaing the information from the White House.

Below is the full text of Senator Dayton’s statement.

Mr. President, last week the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which I am a member, approved its report entitled Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared. The Committee’s distinguished Chairman set today as the deadline for “additional views.”

I reluctantly voted not to approve that draft of the report because it is seriously incomplete while it is still lacking all of the information, documents, and testimony, which President Bush and his subordinates denied the Committee.

Last March 15, the Ranking Member asked the Chairman to subpoena the withheld documents and witnesses. Regrettably, she declined to do so.

Earlier this year, on January 12, the Chairman and Ranking member wrote then-White House Chief of Staff Mr. Andrew Card regarding the information they had previously requested. Their letter stated, in part, "This practice (of withholding information) must cease."

It continued, "We are willing to discuss claims of Executive Privilege asserted by the White House, either directly or through a federal agency. But we will not stand for blanket instructions to refuse answering any questions concerning any communications with the E.O.B.," which is the Executive Office of the President.

Their insistence that either Administration officials comply with this oversight committee's rightful demands, or the President invoke his Executive Privilege not to do so was entirely appropriate. Unfortunately, when Mr. Card and his subordinates still refused to comply, the Chairman denied the Ranking Member’s request to issue subpoenas.

Regrettably, at its markup of the draft report, the Senate Committee failed to support my motion to subpoena those documents and witnesses, which were being withheld by the White House without claim to Executive Privilege, and which were being wrongfully denied by executive agencies.

The Administration's refusal to comply and cooperate with this investigation is deplorable, as is the Homeland Security Committee's failure to back the Chairman's and Ranking Member's proper insistence that the White House do so. That Committee is charged by the full Senate with the responsibility to oversee the agencies, programs, and activities related to homeland security. The Committee was expressly directed by the Senate Majority Leader to examine the Bush Administration's failure to respond quickly or effectively to the disasters caused by Hurricane Katrina. This investigation is not complete without all of the information requested from the Administration. Furthermore, the Report's findings and conclusions can hardly be considered reliable if the White House has decided what information to provide and what information to withhold from the Committee.

This unfortunate acquiescence confirms the judgment of the Senate Democratic Leader that an independent, bipartisan commission was necessary to ensure a complete and unbiased investigation into the failed federal, state, and local responses to Hurricane Katrina. This request has been repeatedly denied by the Majority, with the assurance that the Senate Committee would fulfill those responsibilities. Tragically and reprehensibly, it has failed to do so. Thus, the Committee failed the Senate's Constitutional obligations to be an in independent, coequal branch of government from the Executive. It also failed the long-suffering victims of Hurricane Katrina, who deserve to know why their government has failed them, and all of the American people, who depend upon their elected representatives to protect their lives and their interests without regard to partisan political considerations. That partisanship includes unjustified protection of an Administration of the same political party, just as much as undue criticism from one of another party.

That partisan protectionism is especially unwarranted given widespread agreement about the urgent need to understand the failures during and after Hurricane Katrina and to remedy them before another large-scale disaster, God forbid, should occur.

Now, eight months after the hurricane, the lack of progress and cleanup, repair and reconstruction in devastated areas provides further evidence of the federal government's continuing failure to respond efficiently or effectively. There is no time in which the helping hand of government is more urgently needed and more surely deserved than during and after a disaster. Victims are damaged or devastated physically, emotionally, and financially. Local officials and their public services are overwhelmed, if not destroyed. They need a federal emergency response organization comprised of experienced, dedicated professionals who have the resources necessary to alleviate short-term suffering and commence long-term recovery, and also the authority to expeditiously commit those resources.

What the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina showed was the utter ineptitude of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Even worse, FEMA's indifference and incompetence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was not an isolated instance. In my direct experience with FEMA's disaster relief responses in Minnesota, the agency is too often a major obstruction to recovery projects, rather than a principled ally. Thus, I agree with report's “recommendation to create a new, Comprehensive Emergency Management Organization…to Prepare for and Respond to All Disasters and Catastrophes.” I remain open-minded about whether this new entity should remain within the Department of Homeland Security, as this recommendation intends, or be established as a separate federal agency.

The challenge for the Committee, for all of Congress, and for the Administration will be to actually “recreate” an existing federal agency which has been become dysfunctional and nonfunctional. Merely “reforming” FEMA by rearranging some boxes and lines in this organizational chart, revising it, and giving its head a new title, will be woefully in inadequate. The new organization must be more streamlined, centralized, and compact than its predecessor. It must be less bureaucratic, less consumed with regulatory minutia, and less resistant to local recovery initiatives. It must spend less time creating complex plans and cumbersome procedures and more time in training and perfecting action responses to emergency situations.

History shows that “if a student does not learn the lesson, the teacher reappears.” This report describes some of the most important lessons from the failed response to Hurricane Katrina. The Committee's and this Congress's subsequent actions to correct those serious deficiencies before the next catastrophe will indicate whether those lessons will be learned.

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