By Any Other Name

SOMETIMES it's a good idea for Senate committees to advertise the results of their deliberations with flashy sound bites. Sometimes it isn't. Last week, when the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released the results of its investigations into Hurricane Katrina, it wasn't. Among other things, the report recommended shutting down the Federal Emergency Management Agency and replacing it with a new agency. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the committee chairman, recently said FEMA was "discredited, demoralized and dysfunctional" and generally "beyond repair." Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the committee's ranking Democrat, said FEMA is dismissed in the Gulf Coast as a joke, even "a four-letter word," and should therefore be replaced.

Unfortunately, these remarks allowed others to dismiss the report as calling for nothing more than "rebranding FEMA" or "moving organizational boxes." In fact, whether FEMA is called FEMA or something else is much less important than the question of what changes are made to its responsibilities, status, organization and resources. On all of those counts, the Senate's bipartisan report makes good suggestions.

Among other things, Ms. Collins and Mr. Lieberman propose moving preparedness functions that are now elsewhere in the Department of Homeland Security into the agency, giving it responsibility not only for responding to disasters but also for organizing in advance the necessary telecommunications systems, medical services and infrastructure protection. They also propose decentralizing the agency, giving it more powerful regional offices that work with state and local governments, other federal agencies and the Red Cross ahead of disasters as well as during them.

Most important, they argue against another proposal gaining currency these days, which is to remove FEMA from Homeland Security. FEMA doesn't need another bureaucratic dislocation any more than it needs a name change. And, as the senators point out, the Homeland Security Department would create a mini-FEMA of its own if the existing agency were taken away. Much better, as they argue, to raise the agency's profile and status within Homeland Security and the government at large by giving its director the job of advising the president during disasters. As they turn their report into legislation -- and as others on Capitol Hill and in the White House start to work on FEMA reform as well -- these points, not the question of FEMA's name, are the ones to take seriously.