00:00FEMA spending on supplies is down,
00:02in the middle of hurricane season.
00:0492% less than this time last year.
00:07FEMA usually buys all of its supplies before hurricane season
00:10so everything is ready when the storm comes.
00:12Water, tarps, generators, trucks to haul it all.
00:15But this year, Bloomberg government
00:17went through federal contract data
00:19and found FEMA has spent $310 million on contracts so far,
00:24down from 3.9 billion last year.
00:27Bloomberg's full numbers are paywalled
00:29so I had to do the math myself, but here's what's happening.
00:32First, the money stopped.
00:34Congress couldn't agree on a Homeland Security budget,
00:36so DHS shut down in February and stayed shut until April.
00:40FEMA is part of DHS, so no budget means no new money.
00:44The emergency fund it lives on drained to about $1.6 billion.
00:49For scale, the California wildfires last year
00:52cost FEMA $2.7 billion in the first month alone.
00:55FEMA blames Democrats and Congress
00:57for refusing to pass the budget,
00:59Democrats say the administration spent the fund down
01:02while it couldn't be refilled.
01:03The White House also wants states to do this job instead.
01:07We want to wean off of FEMA
01:10and we want to bring it down to the state level.
01:12Trump's executive order argued that FEMA's bureaucracy
01:15slows disaster response and noted that the agency
01:17had obligated nearly $30 billion a year for three straight years.
01:22But despite the lower spending, FEMA says it's ready.
01:25It trained over a million local responders and ran storm drills
01:28with every hurricane-prone state before the season started,
01:31and NOAA expects a quiet hurricane season.
01:34Fewer storms means less to buy.
01:36That's a real argument.
01:37But here's what complicates that.
01:39A FEMA internal review from last year's season said the agency is not ready,
01:43blaming staffing cuts and contract changes.
01:45When that report leaked, DHS called it one line from a 19-page deck
01:49that was one official's opinion.
01:51But with all that said, is FEMA spending smarter or spending too little?
01:55Does the difference matter if the storm shows up either way?
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