That makes it easy for them to believe that something like FEMA was just cooked up by some bureaucrat for the sole purpose of expanding the bureaucracy--therefore it can be eliminated with no repercussions.
But the history of the US government needing to be involved in emergency management goes back to at least 1803 during the 7th US Congress. It is actually an interesting history, and it is one that culminates with the creation of FEMA to better coordinate all of the different agencies that were required to effectively respond to the various emergencies experienced by the American people.
Asking the simple question of why the federal government has had to be involved in emergency management in some capacity for the last 220 years would--or should--lead one quickly to the conclusion that it must be more complicated than just something the states can take care of on their own.
Sure, states can--and do--perform a lot of their own emergency management. There are many things they do very well. But there are many things the federal government is uniquely positioned to do--especially in the area of prevention. Consider flooding alone: The Mississippi River touches 10 states. The Ohio River river flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin includes parts of 14 states. A lack of federal coordination leaves these states to figure out the issues surrounding mitigation and other responsibilities themselves.
Imagine also a nuclear powerplant disaster. Radiation--like so many other things--does not stop at the border of a state; and how many states have the capacity to deal with a nuclear meltdown on their own?
Which brings us to the other advantage the federal government currently has that most states do not: the lack of a balanced budget requirement. This comes in pretty handy when something happens that would otherwise force you to make drastic cuts to your state's services to pay for it.
Many things are like traffic lights: we hate sitting at them, but if they were all taken away tomorrow it would not take long before we realized how much safer and more effective they make our roadways and we would put them back in. Unfortunately a lot of lives would be lost in learning that lesson. We risk something similar with the destruction of FEMA.
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