Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I wish to speak very briefly on the Toomey amendment. I know we have on the floor a bill that basically, let's face it, puts off for about 4 years reforms we put into the Flood Insurance Program. It is a $24 billion program. It is a very small, in essence, entitlement program we have in this country.

I am very despondent over the fact that we passed these reforms unanimously out of the Banking Committee in 2011. That took place in October of 2013.

Our Nation is facing incredible entitlement problems, and we all know it. People on both sides of the aisle have been down here ad nauseam talking about the fact that as a Nation, the No. 1 threat we have is our inability to deal with the fiscal issues we know we have throughout the entitlement programs we have in this country. Here we have a situation where, unanimously, out of the Banking Committee, we passed reforms to deal with the flood insurance program which we know is moving quickly towards insolvency.

So what do we do? Maybe instead of being the most deliberative body in the world, we might be described as the most pandering body in the world. What we are doing instead is punting on these reforms. I am discouraged by that. It is amazing. I think we have not shown the ability to really address any of the bigger issues that our Nation has to deal with.

Obviously, I would be more responsive to a bill that maybe made tweaks or did some things to make this work in a way that was not quite as draconian. But the fact is we all know the way the program works. It is just not sustainable, and we know that, in essence, taxpayers all across this country are subsidizing folks who are participating in a national program that called for them to have insurance relative to their own property.

So in an effort to try to deal with this in a more thoughtful way, Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania has offered an amendment to ensure that the increases in premiums people are facing are done in a way that obviously dramatically reduces the impact on people. Again, I applaud that. I appreciate that. I think there are some homeowners in this country, as well as property owners, who are having--the way the program now works, these increases would take place over the next 4 to 5 years. Instead, the Toomey amendment causes them to not increase--especially for those who make under a certain amount of money--more than 25 percent a year. So if someone has a $200 bill for flood insurance next year, it would go up 50 percent.

I think it is a thoughtful effort to try to cause this bill to still be actuarially sound. It has no negative impact on our deficits. I think it is a way for us to deal with this in a much better way than, let's face it, putting our heads in the sand and not taking on this issue.

I want to go back one more time and say this is one of the few reforms--it may be the only reform that I am aware of--that has actually become law that has come out of the Banking Committee in several years. It did so unanimously. This is in essence an entitlement program. It is a small entitlement program. I understand it is very important to some property owners around our country. But if we as a body are going to turn away from reforms and not replace those reforms with other reforms but instead delay--in essence what most people believe because of the way FEMA operates--delay this for 4 years, then I think it speaks to a body that just really has no desire whatsoever to take on the issues that are so important to our Nation's citizens.

So I think the Toomey amendment is a thoughtful approach to try to deal with the issue, which I think is affecting many people in this body who have people they represent who are going through substantial increases in a way that they feel to be too draconian. So if that is a Senator's issue, I urge people to strongly support the Toomey amendment.

By the way, with the passage of the Toomey amendment, which leaves the rest of the reforms in place, I will then believe we have done something in this body that is thoughtful. We will have attempted to make this Flood Insurance Program actuarially sound and, at the same time, we will have solved the issue that I think so many people here are concerned about. Without the passage of the Toomey amendment as a part of this bill, I wish to say one more time, this body will have failed once again. With a very, very, very small entitlement program, we will have failed to rise to the occasion, to put our country, minimally, on a course toward solvency, and instead turned away from this effort which speaks to the fact that there is almost no likelihood that we will ever, within the short period of the midterm anyway, be able to address the bigger issues we all know are looming and are affecting our country in such a big way.

I urge strong support for the Toomey amendment. Without the Toomey amendment, I hope this body will vote down this bill which undoes the only real reforms the Banking Committee has put in place in the last several years.

With that, I yield the floor, and I thank the Presiding Officer for the time.

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