Barney Frank: “And the logic is this: we have a proposal that came forward, brought forward by the gentleman from Mississippi to add a…”

“And the logic is this: we have a proposal that came forward, brought forward by the gentleman from Mississippi to add a program to the National Flood Insurance Program that says that if you have national water insurance, you can, at your option, add wind insurance. Remember, no new insured are eligible here. You have to have water and then you can get wind. The argument that the gentleman from Mississippi has made irrefutably on this House floor is that you simply cannot, days after a storm has damaged, try to sort out what was wind and what was water. Now, unlike the flood program, the gentlewoman from Minnesota is right, the flood program is in deep debt. We inherited, from our Republican colleagues, a flood insurance program that is hurting. They had control of that program, House, Senate and President; and it went into debt. As the gentlewoman says, we have a bill, and we had it last year in the House too, but not in the Senate, that makes it better. Everyone agrees that our bill, everyone who has read it agrees that our bill reduces the financial problems with flood, but it doesn't wipe them out. There's a large problem there. Billions of dollars. Here's the illogic. The gentleman from Mississippi has put forward a proposal for optional wind insurance which will have to be actuarially sound. When the flood insurance program was passed, there was no PAYGO. Flood insurance is hurting. They're supposed to be actuarially sound, but it's very loose.”