Here's the number to hang on to: 57 percent. That's the share of local emergency management offices in America that run on one full-time employee or less, according to a new census by Argonne National Laboratory. Twenty-two percent have nobody full-time at all.

In October, FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton told the nation's state emergency managers to build up their reserves and plan to handle most disasters without federal help, with changes that could start within six months. Days earlier, his seven-page memo to every FEMA employee named objective number one: reduce federal government dependency. The president's FEMA Review Council has already proposed cutting the federal share of disaster costs from at least 75 percent to as little as 50 percent, phased in over two to three years.

Host Steve Ellis is joined by TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell, who read the memo so closely he checked whether someone had copied TCS's homework. States should carry their share and prepare before the storm. TCS has said so for years. The question is how far this goes and how fast.

Can a state hire, train, and budget its way there in six months, when many legislatures meet for only part of the year and some only every other year? Who does the work if FEMA steps back? And what happens to FEMA's know-how when its workforce is already down about 17 percent?

Plus: the weirdest line in the memo, why a levee can be a tool to flood your neighbor, and what taxpayers should watch for when Congress comes back to a December 11 funding deadline.

The question was never whether. It's how far and how fast.