Bill Lee: “I stand with enormous respect for my friend, my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Louisiana. I stand also with…”

“I stand with enormous respect for my friend, my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Louisiana. I stand also with enormous respect for the amount of care and diligence he puts into each legislative effort that he addresses in this Chamber and in the committee on which we serve together. I wish to respond to a couple of points. My colleague is absolutely correct. Most of the people--the overwhelming majority of people who get insurance under this program--are not wealthy. It is one of the reasons this is a limited-purpose amendment. This amendment would deal only with properties, new properties, to be insured worth more than $2.5 million. The idea is, if you can build this structure, a home, or otherwise worth more than $2.5 million, there can and ought to be a way--there is a way for you to provide for the assurance in the event of a flood, for the addressing of whatever flood damage is done as a result of that. Anyone who has the ability to afford such a structure can address that structure without having to be subsidized by America's poor- and middle-class families. Secondly, I would like to respond to the suggestion that the purpose of this amendment is somehow to kill the NFIP program. If that were the purpose of it, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. We would simply be entertaining means by which to block their reauthorization of that program.…”