Article from The Hill: Why Will FEMA Spend as Much in Past Two years as in Previous 37?  Article by Brock Long, former FEMA Administrator.  An excerpt:

It’s time to think differently about funding disasters and to stop politicizing them. The dedicated public servants inside FEMA know how to reduce costs and mitigate disasters, but they need Congress to listen to them and act. Doing so will reduce the complexity of future disasters. Reinsurance and catastrophic bond concepts, coupled with pre-disaster mitigation dollars, will ultimately reduce disaster costs in the future. Until then, costs will continue to rise in the future and unnecessary disaster politics will reign.