Using FEMA to Fix Everything Else?

Can the agency be fixed in the wake of the Katrina disaster?

Can FEMA be fixed? Administration officials tell TIME they plan to rework the agency's makeup and responsibilities--and perhaps even change its name to shed the stigma following the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. As Michael Brown, the former chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emphasized during his occasionally churlish testimony on Capitol Hill last week, "FEMA does not own fire trucks, ambulances, search-and-rescue equipment." Says James Jay Carafano, an authority on homeland security at the conservative Heritage Foundation: "It's the National Disaster Coordinating Agency. You could probably come up with a sexier name, but that's what it does."

The White House, anxious...

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