National Flood Insurance Program Further Extension Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mrs. WAGNER. Mr. Speaker, I rise because today we are voting on a 1- week extension of the National Flood Insurance Program. This will be the eighth short-term extension since fiscal year 2017, and it is unacceptable.

My district floods every year, and it is imminently clear that we must reform our flood insurance program, not just repeatedly extend it. Requiring taxpayers to fund construction projects in severe flood zones over and over again is extremely expensive, and it isn't a sustainable solution. The numbers prove it: NFIP is currently operating on a $1.4 billion annual deficit, with no end in sight.

As Chairman Hensarling knows all too well, I have personally spent the better part of a year, along with the ranking member, Mr. Al Green, working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in other disaster recovery programs. We must ensure that funds go to the people who truly need them, like the disaster recovery program. The current flood insurance is broken, and we must fix it once and for all.

Mr. Speaker, it has been 1 year since the House passed a reform package that would have vastly improved the National Flood Insurance Program. It has been 1 year since the Senate has refused to act. I urge my colleagues to support the serious structural reforms that the Committee on Financial Services passed last November.

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