When we started out doing this, basically what we were doing was throwing money at the problem. In most cases, people had absolutely no idea how to spend the money.

Even more than money and the availability of money, what really slows down the reconstruction is decision-making bureaucracy and red tape,

Where do you stage? Where do you go? You have to have communications, you have to have electricity, you have to have dry ground. These are all things that have to exist, and these are all things that don't exist in New Orleans.

Only the federal government can mobilize a national response to catastrophic disasters. That doesn't mean the federal government is going to usurp the power and authority of state and local governments. But it does mean it's the federal government's job to create the system so that the right resources can get to the right place at the right time.

In many ways, this is a test of our national capacity, ... If we can't do this 24-7-365, we aren't doing our job for preparedness.

Given that the tsunami killed 150,000 people [in Southeast Asia], I frankly think we responded pretty well to a storm that might have done the same, given the density of the population in the area where it hit. Essentially, Katrina was a nuclear bomb without a mushroom cloud or radiation.