Rep. Peters Commends President’s Executive Order on Community Disaster Preparedness & Resiliency

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Scott Peters (CA-52) released the following statement in support of President Obama’s executive order that in part establishes a task force to address community storm resiliency strategy. Task Force members are representatives from state and local governments, and tribal leaders, and include California Governor Jerry Brown.

“As extreme weather events become more common, we must continue efforts to arm our communities with the best information and preparation available,” Congressman Peters said. “In today’s executive order, the President took action toward developing the sort of integrated, efficient strategy we need for increasing our country’s resiliency efforts.”

The President’s executive order comes after Rep. Peters introduced bipartisan legislation, the STRONG Act, in the House that would create a clearinghouse of information for state and local governments to prepare for and react to an extreme weather event. Further, the STRONG Act would create an interagency working group to maximize government efficiency in the dissemination of information and resiliency planning efforts, while also creating a unified strategic vision for resiliency across the Federal government.

Rep. Peters continued, “I hope that Congress passes my bipartisan STRONG Act so that we build on this executive order and save taxpayer money in the long term. After spending more than $100 billion on disaster relief in the past few years, much of it off budget, we have to do a better job of mitigating the potential for future damages. Given that every dollar we spend on resiliency now saves us four dollars in reduced damages, this type of commonsense legislation should move forward as soon as possible.”

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