House appropriators have released their FY 2026 Homeland Security funding bill, and buried in the FEMA section is a clear signal that Congress thinks the current disaster system is breaking down. Read closely, it looks less like micromanagement and more like lawmakers documenting the case for change. Slowly, through baby steps, Congress appears to be reasserting itself as a co-equal branch of government.

That context matters. The President has said he would consider getting rid of FEMA outright, and to be fair, the agency is struggling. But as we and others have shown, simply pushing responsibility for major natural disasters onto states with block grants would create its own crisis because by definition a major disaster overwhelms the state’s ability to respond. Furthermore, most major disasters affect multiple states—a clearly federal issue. Bottom line, if the system is broken, the answer is to fix it—not to pull the plug.

The funding bill boosts FEMA’s Operations and Support account to $1.67 billion from $1.48 billion last year. Some of that is straightforward and overdue. Restoring staff positions cut last year. Modernizing grants management. Supporting Urban Search and Rescue. These are fixes for an agency failing to keep up with the volume of money and responsibility it is being asked to manage.

Then it gets interesting.

By our count, the bill includes no fewer than 25 reporting and briefing requirements for FEMA. Lawmakers direct the agency to brief, report, submit, and update Congress on nearly every major function it performs, often on tight and recurring schedules. Within 30 days of enactment, FEMA would have to brief on execution of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Within 30 days, it would have to explain the criteria it uses to recommend disaster declarations and justify delays Congress deems excessive. Within 30 days, it would also have to brief on administration of the Next Generation Warning System and account for how last year’s funds were handled.

House appropriators also press FEMA hard on staffing and workload capacity, coupling explicit staffing mandates with recurring monthly briefings that require FEMA leadership to account for how the agency is managing its workforce. That’s Congress signaling concern that FEMA’s capacity problems are no longer episodic but systemic.

Mitigation is where lawmakers dig in hardest. FEMA would be required to brief Congress monthly on the status of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program that was created in the first Trump administration. After the current administration tried to kill the program and lost in court, appropriators would now force the agency to justify this decision and to itemize every terminated grant—how much was awarded, how much was spent, how much was returned, and what work will now never be completed. Ouch.

Delays and backlogs get similar treatment. FEMA would have to report within 60 days on outstanding reimbursement claims, explain why they’re stalled, and lay out a plan to reduce the backlog—then repeat the exercise monthly. A new public dashboard would need to detail project-level reimbursement status, timelines, and explanations for delays.

Immediate Needs Funding (INF), FEMA’s tool for rationing reimbursements when money gets tight, is the clearest tell. FEMA would have to brief Congress on how those decisions are made, what work gets delayed, and whether a more strategic approach makes sense. If INF is triggered, FEMA would then be required to submit weekly reports on delayed reimbursements by disaster, state, and category of work. Weekly.

All of this oversight sits alongside a $26.4 billion allocation for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), which remains the default funding mechanism, treated as inevitable and largely insulated from normal budget discipline. For years, Congress has required monthly reporting on the status of the DRF, but Congress keeps writing big checks after disasters strike, even as it documents frustration with how the system functions. But maybe things are moving in the right direction.

The timing is hard to miss. As House appropriators demand more reporting from FEMA to explain rising disaster costs, the administration is simultaneously walking away from one of the federal government’s most important public datasets tracking those costs in the first place—making it harder to see whether disaster spending is actually working.

Alas, oversight is necessary, but it isn’t sufficient. Reports don’t reduce wildfire risk. Dashboards don’t stop development in floodplains.

Read generously, this House bill looks like appropriators setting the table for broader reforms, including ideas now circulating in the FEMA Act. Through a Making Congress Great Again lens, this is Congress trying to claw back control and dictating that Uncle Sam is still in the disaster mitigation and response business—building the record for reform rather than continuing to outsource disaster policy to the administration. Predictable mitigation funding. Clearer rules. Less reliance on supplemental emergency spending as the default solution.

If those reforms stall, FEMA will remain trapped in the same loop. If they move, this bill may end up looking like the moment Congress finally admitted the current approach isn’t working. It’s time mitigation and prevention stopped being treated as optional add-ons and started being funded and managed like the core fiscal responsibilities they are. Congress cannot afford to rest on the legislative laurels— err, language—oversight is only useful if it leads to enforcement.