How would you best describe your opinion of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)?

👍 Favorable (42%) – "The issues with FEMA aren't coming from the agency itself but from our government not prioritizing its funding and resources. We are budgeting for defense and sending money abroad instead of keeping it here where we really need it. Funding agencies like FEMA should be a much higher priority than they are for politicians (from both sides) currently."

• "Like all other useful government programs, I’m in favor. But also like many government programs, FEMA is extremely slow, disorganized, and financially irresponsible."

"I worked as a communications consultant with the FEMA Dam Safety, Earthquake, and Seismic branches, and the employees at FEMA are experts in their fields who work so hard to make a difference and raise awareness of the danger of natural hazards. With the scale of this relief project, there are sure to be a few hiccups, but truly everyone I met within FEMA was passionate about making a positive difference and protecting and educating as many people as possible about the impacts of climate change."

• "FEMA is doing as good a job as can be expected during the two massive hurricanes that have come through in the last couple of weeks. They had advance plans and rolled out personnel and supplies in advance of the storms. What has seriously hampered their work is the Category 45 storm of disinformation being spewed by numerous Republicans. AI-generated photos, lies that all the survivors will get is $750, lies that all the money has been spent on immigrants, lies that snipers are shooting survivors so they won’t make any further claims … it is harder to fight this garbage than the storms themselves!"

↔️ Neutral (27%) – "I think there is a general lack of confidence in our government's ability to spend within a budget given the trillions in debt and over spend. Natural disasters are a great example where you need to save for a rainy day and can't "borrow" against those funds hoping a disaster never comes. You may actually need to move funds from other budgets to FEMA in bad years."

• "FEMA does a great deal of good - WHEN and IF people are willing and able to file all the paperwork. Anything related to government funding requires a ton of paperwork that in theory avoids fraud. Sadly, there are always people willing to defraud the government (and anyone able to provide funds and supplies) but they are experts at all that paperwork."

"It's no FEMA per se that I take issue with, but it's the fact that we send so much money to other countries, but when it comes to our own people, we "run out." Stop funding wars in other countries, and start putting our money and resources towards our own."

👎 Unfavorable (31%) – "There is a better way to handle this. All of the insurance companies provide funds, but it is impossible to keep up with costs. I feel more needs to be done to ensure lower insurance for ALL by not allowing crazy costs for insurance. I feel the giv’t needs to put limits on how much insurance can cost, and make sure that these funds are actually going towards the disaster relief, and not lining their pockets."

• "I know for a fact from people living in that area they are not getting $750, maybe some people are but one individual I know that lost 100% of everything got $300 in the form of a check in which they really didn’t even have a way of going to cash. That would not have covered the amount of food in their home at the time of the disaster. I believe the government was spending that FEMA money on the illegal migrants that are coming into our nation, they care more about them than they do about their own American citizens."

"I believe this should be handled at the local and state level. The Fed's have proven they are extremely inefficient at managing funds. Keeping the help local creates greater efficiency. Sending your money to Washington and paying them a brokerage fee and then having them send it back with instructions that are delegated by a group of people in an office in DC doesn't work well. Ask anyone familiar with all programs similar to this and they will tell you, it is a mess. KEEP IT LOCAL!"