Water Resources Development Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I rise today to speak in favor of amendment No. 802 to the WRDA bill offered by my friend, great legislator, chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Senator Mary Landrieu. I am proud to cosponsor this amendment.

The amendment would delay flood insurance premium increases until FEMA has completed a study on the impacts on the affordability of planned premium increases. Nobody in this body knows better than Senator Landrieu the challenges faced by communities in the wake of natural disasters, and she has been beyond generous in sharing her time and expertise and lending her vocal support to the States, such as mine, so greatly impacted by Superstorm Sandy.

Last year Congress passed a flood insurance reauthorization and reform bill, the Biggert-Waters Act. We passed the Biggert-Waters Act because if the program expired, flood insurance would become unavailable or unaffordable for people who needed it.

Congress also needed to reform the program going forward because it is billions of dollars in debt and needs to be put on a better financial footing.

In my home State, one of the counties received a very poor and unfair map, which was undone in the bill.

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, many middle-class families in New York are struggling to get back on their feet. Many lost everything. They have had to drain their savings to rebuild. They have been out of their homes for months. The kids get on a schoolbus and have to go 20, 30 miles to school.

Imagine losing everything in your home as so many have. It is an awful feeling, not just the chair you were comfortable sitting in, all of your appliances and all of that, but that picture of great-grandma and great-grandpa which was priceless is gone. It is a horrible thing.

Adding another layer of difficulty to this situation, the flood insurance reforms enacted by Congress last summer result, in many cases, in huge insurance premiums. Our families in New York are caught in limbo.

Families in Breezy Point, the Rockaways, Broad Channel, Staten Island, Brooklyn, on the south shore of Long Island, from Long Beach all the way out to Mastic and Shirley, are still trying to make decisions, are repairing their homes and investing tens of thousands of dollars to do so. Many of these homes are very middle-class homes. These are not rich people. They have worked hard. Some of them are teachers, policemen, firemen, construction workers or small business owners. Many of them are being told their insurance rates could be $10,000 a year or more. What kind of insurance is flood insurance if it is $10,000 a year? It puts homeowners in the worst possible position. They either have to come up with an additional $10,000--worse in Sandy because they have already paid money to redo their homes, but even for a normal homeowner $10,000 a year and you don't get a mortgage. Ten thousand dollars a year, this is absurd.

I don't know what is wrong with the flood insurance program, but any program that has to charge an average homeowner on Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens or Staten Island $10,000 ought to be reexamined by this Congress. It is confounding. People are upset and they should be.

Recognizing the burden these changes could put on families, FEMA was required to conduct a study on the affordability of flood insurance, the effects of increased premiums on low-income homeowners and middle-income homeowners, and ways to increase affordability. The study was originally supposed to be completed within 270 days. That was 9 months after the bill was passed.

That deadline has come and gone. FEMA hasn't even begun to collect the necessary data. We know FEMA has been busy responding to Sandy and other natural disasters.

At the same time it is unfair to hit homeowners with massive new flood insurance premiums without any plan of how to address the needs for those who can't afford these skyrocketing, out-of-control, and out-of-reach premiums. The amendment is a recognition of that fundamental fairness.

Large parts of New York City are having their flood maps revised. As a result, New Yorkers, many, could face the prospect of crushing increases in premiums. Right now, far too many Sandy victims are still in the process of rebuilding their homes. They simply cannot afford a whopping increase in flood insurance premiums.

Common sense and a sense of fairness dictate that we should delay any unnecessary increases until we know exactly how hard they hit our communities and until we can come up with a solution that makes flood insurance reasonable and affordable--particularly if it is mandated, as it often is--in effect or by law.

That is what the amendment does. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the amendment.

I also wish to mention an amendment offered by my good friend from across the Hudson River, Senator Menendez of New Jersey, a State also suffering from Superstorm Sandy, that seems to address many of the same concerns.

His amendment would delay flood insurance premium increases until FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds have been expended. This commonsense amendment would give homeowners a chance to use the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for its intended purpose, to rebuild stronger and safer, resulting in lower flood risks.

This amendment simply says: Let's wait until people have taken this opportunity to reduce their future flood risks before we increase their flood premiums. It makes abundant sense. I hope my colleagues would pass both Senator Landrieu's and Senator Menendez's fine amendments.

I yield the floor.

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