House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Tex.) is not participating in the President Bush roundup to lasso a greater role in natural disaster response for the Pentagon. He flatly told the Associated Press, “I don’t want the federal government to take over disaster response.” His reason: “Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

