A new report says that FEMA is beyond repair:

Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.

….Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," [Republican Senator Susan] Collins said the overall report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."

Under Bill Clinton and the leadership of James Witt, FEMA was recognized as a model government agency — effective and efficient.  So much so that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote:

"FEMA has developed a sterling reputation for delivering disaster-relief services, a far cry from its abysmal standing before James Lee Witt took its helm in 1993. How did Witt turn FEMA around so quickly? Well, he is the first director of the agency to have emergency-management experience. He stopped the staffing of the agency by political patronage. He removed layers of bureaucracy. Most important, he instilled in the agency a spirit of preparedness, of service to the customer, of willingness to listen to ideas of local and state officials to make the system work better."

But when Bush got his hands on the agency, he allowed it to reverse course.  He installed a director of the agency with no emergency-management experience. He permitted the staffing of the agency by political patronage. He added layers of bureaucracy.

He killed FEMA so badly that there now exists a bipartisan consensus that it should be put out of its misery and rebuilt from the ground up.