Bipartisan Group of Senators To Launch Investigation of Federal Response

Reuters reports tonight that a bipartisan group of US senators said on Friday they will open a bipartisan investigation into what they described as an "immense failure" of the government response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

"Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who heads the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the panel's top Democrat, said they plan to begin an oversight investigation next week when the full Senate returns from a summer recess.

'We intend to demand answers as to how this immense failure occurred, but our immediate focus must and will be on what Congress can do to help the rescue and emergency operations that are ongoing,' the senators said in a joint statement.

'It is also our responsibility to investigate the lack of preparedness and inadequate response to this terrible storm,' they said, adding that it was "increasingly clear that serious shortcomings in preparedness and response have hampered relief efforts at a critical time.'....

As President George W. Bush toured the disaster area, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu said the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the Bush administration placed under the Department of Homeland Security, failed to deploy enough resources to the area quickly."

Lieberman, Collins and Landrieu were all part of the bipartisan group of moderate senators who successfully negotiated a solution to the threatened "nuclear option" to end the 200-year filibuster tradition for judicial nominees.