Description:
As ordered reported by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on October 29, 2013
H.R. 3300 would authorize appropriations totaling $3.1 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), CBO estimates. Those authorizations include about $2.9 billion for salaries and expenses of the agency; $110 million for the Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Response System; $6 million for Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) grants; and an estimated $82 million to provide grants to repair structures primarily used for religious purposes after a disaster. Based on historical expenditure patterns, CBO estimates that implementing the legislation would cost $3.1 billion over the 2014-2018 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.
Enacting this legislation would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.
H.R. 3300 would impose intergovernmental and private-sector mandates, as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), by eliminating an existing right to seek compensation for damages and by requiring employers to allow members of the urban search and rescue response system to reclaim their jobs upon completing a deployment to a disaster. Based on information from FEMA, CBO estimates that the cost to comply with the mandates would fall below the annual thresholds established in UMRA for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates ($75 million and $150 million, respectively, in 2013, adjusted annually for inflation).
