Two congressmen have presented their brainchild for making the Federal Emergency Management Agency more effective during natural disasters:

Make FEMA its own federal agency.

According to The Hill:

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday that would make the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) its own Cabinet-level department, elevating its importance as natural disasters regularly thrust it into the national spotlight. 

Moskowitz, who formerly headed Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, and Graves argued that bureaucratic red tape is hindering FEMA’s ability to respond rapidly. 

For Congress, what better than to make government bigger?

That's what we see here with this "bipartisan" measure in Congress to make FEMA its own federal agency outside the umbrella Department of Homeland Security, with the idea that it would become more effective.

After all, a branched-off agency is free to grow into its own giant entity, just like a rooted cutting from a plant. They would give FEMA its own cabinet-level status, too, for good measure, to ensure that it didn't fade into the woodwork.

But there seems to be a better way of reading this situation than by making FEMA its own cabinet-level agency.

The congressmen are calling for independence for FEMA from DHS for the same reason half of Oregon wants to break off and join Idaho. 

Might the problem actually be the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, that has made FEMA such a dysfunctional agency?

We've seen the dysfunction all right, with FEMA's Lahaina response, where FEMA officials ensconced themselves in five-star hotels on Maui's north shore, supposedly to "help" with disaster aid on Maui south shore, an hour's drive away from Lahaina. There also were the cheapie $700 checks, which would cover a couple of days' expenses for people who have lost everything to wildfire. The residents were told that was all they were getting.

Yes, they're ineffective. And maybe the congressmen have a point: When have we started hearing about this agency, which functioned just fine for decades during disasters, suddenly being ineffective? Around 2004 or 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What happened before then? George W. Bush set up the Department of Homeland Security in response to 9/11 and placed FEMA into it.

But lately, things have gotten intolerable. It's not just a red-tape-bound bureaucracy anymore. The agency seems to serve itself and Joe Biden's political interests -- recent reports about FEMA transporting illegals from Central America to illegals' destinations of choice in the states, and bankrolling much of the border surge's other collateral costs has left the agency without money for actual disasters, the kinds that hit Americans and are caused by factors beyond their control. Illegals are strictly a policy phenomenon.

Maybe that should be what gets scrutiny over making FEMA its own cabinet-level agency. There obviously are structural problems with a vast bureaucracy of bureaucracies, such as exists in the Department of Homeland Security, and we give the congressmen that.

But there are leadership problems, too. Things have gotten truly intolerable under the current leadership of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Congress has been on-and-off talking about impeaching the man over his incompetence over the border surge. He's also the man who was behind the government's planned censorship bureau, the "Disinformation Governance Board" to be headed by a Mary Poppins imitator, since scuppered owing to public pressure.

Might Mayorkas' leadership alone be worth a second look for congressional impeachment, instead? Mayorkas is the most petty, incompetent, gaslighting, politicized, obnoxious official in Joe Biden's cabinet, and surely the one who's done the most damage to the country. His recent move to hire a string of intelligence officials who lied about the Hunter Biden laptop to be his "advisors" is just his latest malevolent move, but his incompetence on FEMA stands out, too. 

Mayorkas's leadership is not only a case for FEMA independence but the Border Patrol's independence, and probably every agency under the DHS umbrella's independence. They all seem to have turned unusually dysfunctional on Mayorkas' watch, so it's not surprising this one is seeking independence. They all may be, under him.

Which tells us that maybe the case for impeaching Mayorkas for incompetence is stronger than it looks. Congress could get busy on that.

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