Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., wants to use her power as House Financial Services Committee chairwoman to overhaul a program that touches millions of homeowners: the National Flood Insurance Program.
The federal program, created in 1968, has become the top insurance option for homeowners living in flood plains. In total, the program provided $1.3 trillion worth of coverage in 2018 to more than 5 million homes and businesses.
Waters, who worked on a bipartisan flood insurance reform effort that passed into law in 2012, has introduced multiple draft bills to reform how the program works.
“I have long advocated for a long-term reauthorization of the NFIP in order to provide certainty in the housing market,” Waters said at a March committee hearing, at which she also criticized the number of short-term extensions of the program Congress has relied on the last several years. The latest, passed shortly before the partial government shutdown, expires at the end of May.
One of Waters’ proposals would revise the NFIP’s coverage while reducing fees and surcharges, as well set up a pilot program for means-testing the federally subsidized program for low-income homeowners. Two other draft bills from the aptly named California Democrat would authorize more prevention of floods through mitigation, and redrafting of flood plain maps, respectively.
For its part, the Trump administration told reporters last week that it plans to shift more costs to premiums in higher-risk areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the program, has not published its plan. As these changes are being considered, several states in the Midwest are dealing with flooding related to rapidly melting snow; more than two-thirds of Nebraska’s counties declared a disaster due to the flooding.
[Related: Nebraskans compare ‘bomb cyclone’ flooding to the Dust Bowl]
Reforming the program, which is billions in debt, is a major financial issue that intersects with ideological debates over the role of government and climate change.
Storms such as Hurricanes Katrina, Harvey, and Maria, as well as unnamed storms that wreaked havoc on inland parts of Tennessee and western North Carolina in recent years, pushed the program well past its previous limitations on borrowing.
One witness that testified on the subject before the House Financial Services Committee in March, Mabel Guzman, representing the National Association of Realtors, said damage estimates were rapidly increasing due to urban areas flooding more than they had in the past. “Thousand-year floods are the new normal,” she said.
[Also read: Air Force head vows to rebuild flooded Nebraska base even as military knew the risks]
That’s led the program into more than $20 billion in debt, despite the fact that Congress already forgave $16 billion in borrowing, largely as a result of the massive damage caused by Katrina. But the insurance program is also essential to many homeowners in both coastal and inland areas, making reforms a politically sensitive issue. The rapidly increased costs from recent storms also tie reform efforts to arguments about climate change.
Congressional Republicans want to reform the program to encourage more private insurance and decrease cost to federal taxpayers. Democrats argue that, without a federal backstop, insurance costs could be too high for many homeowners.
Another potential target for reform is whether more can be done to prevent flood damage in the first place, through construction and also through mapping.
Data on flooding is managed at the local level, without a centralized access point to check when determining whether an area has flooded recently, or how many times it’s been flooded.
“It’s completely uneven across the country and most of that’s coming from local jurisdictions,” said Collin O’Mara, a former Delaware state environmental official, in reference to the availability of data, during testimony at March’s hearing. O’Mara was asked to appear by the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina.
Though both parties agree that the current system is broken and that fixing it would be a major governance issue, efforts to do so come with significant political hurdles to clear. Right now both Republicans and Democrats are united in their dissatisfaction, less in how to improve the program.
“We can’t continue to kick it down the road. But I believe we should be able to get something done this Congress,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
The first test will be if the committee Waters chairs can advance legislation that Republicans, who control the Senate, will support.
