Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to speak on recent legislation extending the National Flood Insurance Program on a short-term basis. The National Flood Insurance Program, NFIP, was created in 1968 in response to the lack of flood insurance available at the time. The program's intent was to encourage folks to protect their homes and communities to adopt sound floodplain management standards. I would like to reiterate the findings of the 1966 Presidential Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy: ``A flood insurance program is a tool that should be used expertly or not at all. Correctly applied it could promote wise use of flood plains. Incorrectly applied, it could exacerbate the whole problem of flood losses. For the Federal Government to subsidize low premium disaster insurance or provide insurance in which premiums are not proportionate to risk would be to invite economic waste of great magnitude'' In less than a year, we have extended the program seven times, most attached to must-pass bills, without any needed reforms. The program is over $20 billion in debt, even though we forgave $16 billion of that debt just last year. With our Federal debt now above $21 trillion, we need to address the solvency of the NFIP as soon as possible. We can begin doing that by bringing some meaningful reform to the program, including moving towards more risk-based premiums. More importantly, interest from the private flood insurance market is growing.…”