On the recordJuly 16, 2018
I thank the gentleman for his work on this bill. I thank the gentlewoman from Nevada for her work on this bill. It is a bipartisan bill because it makes commonsense. So whether it is DeFazio or Blumenauer or Duffy--go down the list of different people who have worked on it--they have worked on something that makes eminent commonsense, and I want to thank them for their efforts. The saying is: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But the corollary to that is: If it is broken, fix it. What we have just heard are any number of different conversations about the degree to which the buyout program is not just a little bit broken but a whole lot broken. First off, just at an individual level, it captures people in a hamster wheel that they can never get out of. If you look at the average buyout time, it is about 5 years. In that 5-year time period, people are stuck there waiting and waiting and waiting as their house, in many cases, refloods. I have been to Shadowmoss in the West Ashley section of Charleston. I remember going in there after a flood. Those people who had a second story had carried stuff up to the second story. Those who didn't were just dealing with the flooding as it occurred on the first floor. But they had been repeatedly flooded. So at an individual level, this makes sense for the remedy that it offers an individual, so they are not stuck in a house that is repeatedly flooding, as they are trapped in dealing with that.…
