Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk during this discussion about the flood insurance program, about making sure we are providing for the hurricane victims. There is talk about the FAA. Let me be clear: we support the FAA. We support making sure that we provide all the resources necessary for the hurricane victims, from Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria. Where things are getting distorted is that this bill includes extraneous provisions that will actually undermine these very objectives. I want to explain. Under the legislation that has been attached--the flood insurance legislation--it does allow private insurers to come in, which all of us support, but not in a vacuum. What is going to happen when you do this in a vacuum is that you are going to cause premiums to be diverted from the program. This is the program where these people have been paying premiums for years, and the program is not going to have the resources to pay their claims, which means it is going to have to borrow more money, which is going to make the premiums go up even greater. You are going to see the private insurers come in and cherry-pick low- and moderate-risk policies, which is only going to leave the high- risk policies in the program trying to pay a debt and not having a diverse portfolio of low-, moderate-, and high-risk policies. This is a flawed approach. It needs to be addressed on December 9, when this current program expires.…”