Political Quotes

“Madam President, this evening, the leader or someone standing in for the leader is going to come and close out the floor with a number of unanimous consents. One of them will be a unanimous consent to push consideration of the National Flood Insurance Program-- to reauthorize it--a week down the road. I will not object to that unanimous consent request, but I do want to speak to the predicament of the National Flood Insurance Program. For coastal States, this is a very big deal, and this is a program that is now completely out of step with the conditions that coastal States see before them, so we have to get this fixed. The liability of the National Flood Insurance Program ran up to $30 billion after Hurricane Harvey. It borrowed $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury. That is its borrowing limit. It basically maxed itself out. In October, Congress forgave $16 billion. We moved that from a liability of the National Flood Insurance Program to a liability of the United States, in effect putting it on our national credit card. That allowed NFIP to pay out claims for Harvey, Irma, and Maria. At this point, that leaves the program $20 billion in debt. We are not sure, completely, because claims are still being processed from the 2018 hurricane season, but CRS says as of September, the NFIP has only $9.9 billion of remaining borrowing authority.…”