A Pennsylvania Republican on Tuesday blocked a Senate vote on an amendment to delay new federal flood insurance rules that are likely to result in substantial premium increases. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., backed by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and the four senators from New York and New Jersey, had proposed delaying the rules for five years so that Congress can...
A Pennsylvania Republican on Tuesday blocked a Senate vote on an amendment to delay new federal flood insurance rules that are likely to result in substantial premium increases. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., backed by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and the four senators from New York and New Jersey, had proposed delaying the rules for five years so that Congress can take steps to avoid substantial hikes in premiums.
But under Senate rules, "unanimous consent" is required to vote on an amendment, and Sen. Pat Toomey R-Pa., objected to a vote on the Landrieu amendment. Landrieu responded that she would seek to move her amendment as a separate bill.
Toomey said he didn't want to undo the reforms Congress adopted in 2012 to make the flood insurance program fiscally sound. "Under the current flood insurance law that we passed just 10 months ago, we put in place a mechanism to diminish the subsidization that occurs now where homeowners in low-risk areas are made to subsidize in high-risk areas by the way of the nature that premiums are set," Toomey said. "The existing law is designed to diminish significantly that unfair subsidy that occurs, and I think that's why the chairman and the ranking members of the Banking Committee, and many others of our colleagues, oppose this amendment."
Landrieu said Toomey should have voted no if he objected to her amendment, but not to block the Senate from even considering her proposal. "He most certainly is entitled to vote no on our amendment. Other senators may vote no, but I wanted the record to show that he's just saying, 'No, we can't even have a vote,'" Landrieu said.
Landrieu called the 2012 flood insurance reform bill a "cure that is going to kill us." She it was wrapped into an omnibus bill and never really securitized.
For some homeowners, she said, the choice is to elevate homes 18 feet, "which probably roughly would cost $50,000," money "they don't have, or their flood insurance would go up something like $15,000 or $20,000 a year, which they can't pay. So you say, 'Well, that's too bad. Let them sell the house.' Their house has no value. Now this is a dilemma not just for people for Louisiana (but) for people of Mississippi, Alabama, California and New York."
The solution, she said, is to give Congress a way to make the program more fiscally sound without pricing people out of the flood insurance program.
The 2012 flood insurance reauthorization bill phases out some subsidized flood insurance rates and allows rate increases, depending on the property, of either 20 percent or 25 percent a year until properties reach actuarial status. The legislation was intended to make the debt-ridden flood insurance program fiscally sound.
The issue is complicated, Louisiana officials said, by new Federal Emergency Management Agency maps that consider properties not protected by 100-year flood federal levees to be inadequately safeguarded against floods. That puts them at significantly higher risks for calculating rates.
Those Louisiana officials got good news Thursday during a meeting with David Miller, the associate administrator of the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration. He promised that FEMA would redo flood-risk maps to include locally built levees.