Bush appointed inexperienced cronies to head FEMA. This could have something to do with FEMA's piss poor response to Katrina.

From Paul Krugman:

"Several recent news analyses on FEMA's sorry state
have attributed the agency's decline to its inclusion
in the Department of Homeland Security, whose prime
concern is terrorism, not natural disasters. But that
supposed change in focus misses a crucial part of the
story.

For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon
as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a
professional with expertise in responses to disaster
to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph
Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh
quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's
preparedness programs.

You might have expected the administration to
reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness
after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as
important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it
is following a natural disaster. As many people have
noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we
are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today
than we were four years ago.

But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the
appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's
successor.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than
having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr.
Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston
Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous
job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh
left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw
cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the
administration felt for the agency; one can only
imagine the effects on staff morale."