(CNN) - At a campaign stop Tuesday in Pearl, Mississippi, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani promoted his plan to help every community in the nation prepare for terrorist attacks and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast region in 2005.
Giuliani toured the state’s emergency management agency with GOP Gov. Haley Barbour to highlight his plan on disaster response and preparedness, which he says should be decentralized. The presidential hopeful’s proposals include increasing local and state training and creating regional emergency response teams like FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue Teams and giving FEMA new technology to track relief supplies and other aid. He also called for ending appropriation of federal money for congressional pet projects. Instead, Giuliani would use the money to pay for long-term infrastructure needs like improving the nation’s aging bridges.
The proposals taken together comprise the latest of Giuliani’s “Twelve Commitments” which he has been rolling out separately during his campaign.
“Today, every American needs to have a first responder mindset,” Giuliani said in a statement released Tuesday.
Giuliani announced his preparedness commitment on the same day that he named the individuals who would advise him on homeland security during the remainder of his 2008 presidential bid. The advisors include former FBI director Louis Freeh and Rep. Peter King, R-New York, along with former officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and of the New York City government.
Giuliani may be best known nationally for leading New York City after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and has made his experiences dealing with terrorism a hallmark of his campaign.
–CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart