Rand Paul: “no one doubts that the government has a role to play in compensating American citizens who are victimized by terrorist…”

“no one doubts that the government has a role to play in compensating American citizens who are victimized by terrorist attacks. However, Congress should not lose sight of fundamental economic and constitutional principles when considering how best to provide the victims of terrorist attacks just compensation. I am afraid that H.R. 3210, the Terrorism Risk Protection Act, violates several of those principles and therefore passage of this bill is not in the best interests of the American people. Under H.R. 3210, taxpayers are responsible for paying 90 percent of the costs of a terrorist incident when the total cost of that incident exceeds a certain threshold. While insurance companies technically are responsible under the bill for paying back monies received from the Treasury, the administrator of this program may defer repayment of the majority of the subsidy in order to "avoid the likely insolvency of the commercial insurer," or avoid "unreasonable economic disruption and market instability." This language may cause administrators to defer indefinitely the repayment of the loans, thus causing taxpayers to permanently bear the loss.”