HELP Response and Recovery Act

This section would give the Act two short titles: the Helping Eliminate Limitations for Prompt Response and Recovery Act and the HELP Response and Recovery Act.

This section would amend the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 by striking section 695 of that Act (6 U.S.C. 794) in full. Because the entire section would be removed, whatever requirement section 695 imposed on Department of Homeland Security contracting would no longer apply. This section's own heading describes that removed requirement as an obsolete DHS contracting requirement.

This section would define the term covered period for use in the reports it requires. For the first report, the covered period would run from the date this Act becomes law to the date of that report. For each report after the first, the covered period would run from the date of the most recent prior report to the date of the new report. Not later than 540 days after this Act becomes law, and then annually after that until the date that is 5 years after this Act becomes law, the Secretary of Homeland Security would have to submit a report to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Each report would have to review how the repeal made by section 2 has prevented waste, fraud, and abuse and how it has promoted taxpayer savings. Each report would also have to cover any contract that the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency entered into or extended during the covered period under urgent and compelling circumstances without soliciting bids, and for those contracts would have to include: the number of those contracts; the subject of each contract; the amounts the Administrator obligated for each contract; if applicable, the State that benefited from each contract; and if applicable, the name of the major disaster or emergency for which each contract was entered into or extended.