Political Quotes

“This is a commonsense amendment. As many of us on the Financial Services Committee know, the flood insurance program is a public-private partnership where private insurance companies write the coverage and service the policies, with the government setting the coverage and the requirements. Recently, State Farm Insurance decided that they no longer wanted to participate in the program, and they transferred--I guess that's a nice word. An unflattering term which is more accurate would be they dumped 800,000 policies back on the Federal Government. This was after they collected premiums and their agents sold the coverage. This amendment would make changes to that, where if an insurance company wants to participate in the plan, they can; if they want to profit from the plan, they can. But they don't have the unilateral right to dump those policies back on the government agencies. Prior to that, there were about 150 policies that the government was administering directly. What this amendment would do is called a depopulation amendment. It directs FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program to take those policies and distribute them among insurance companies who are willing to service those contracts. And I'm happy to report to the Congress and the Members that many mainline insurance companies have agreed to take up these policies.…”