FEMA Chief: Post-Katrina Overhaul Worked

Hurricane, er, Tropical Storm Irene proved to be no Katrina, and that's partly because the resulting Federal Emergency Management Agency overhaul actually worked, says FEMA administrator Craig Fugate. "We've learned to really work as one team, not as separate levels of government, and to put everything together early before the storm hits," he told This Week. "We shouldn't have to wait until a state is overwhelmed to begin getting ready, have supplies ready, have our teams in the state and work as one team, not waiting for damages to occur and that formal request to come." Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico:

• Chris Christie on evacuation: "We got a million people off the Jersey Shore in 24 hours. Your No. 1 goal as a governor is the saving of human life. It was my call that we were just not going to have people on those barrier islands on the coastline."
• Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley on FEMA: "This is a much better FEMA than the olden days. They have been with us since Day One."
• Ron Paul on FEMA: "It's a system of bureaucratic central economic planning, which is a fallacy that is deeply flawed. FEMA has been around since 1978. It has one of the worst reputations for a bureaucracy ever."
• Colin Powel on Dick Cheney: Many of the ex-veep's reveals were "cheap shots. Cheney may forget that I'm the one who said to President Bush, 'If you break it, you own it.' And you have got to understand that if we have to go to war in Iraq, we have to be prepared for the whole war. And Mr. Cheney did not prepare for what happened after the fall of Baghdad."
  

(More Sunday morning talk shows stories.)