National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I thank the good Senator from Louisiana. I am very pleased to join in this colloquy with my cosponsors of this very important piece of legislation.

This is about affordability of home ownership. The American dream is about home ownership. It always has been, and we want to make sure that continues. So it is about affordability, but it is also about getting it right.

Look, if we are going to reset flood insurance rates, we need to get it right. This affects people across this great Nation. It affects their ability to own and continue to own their own home. We need to make sure, as we make this transition, which we are all working on--we are all working on it--that we get it right. So that is why we see this bipartisan legislation, and we urge our colleagues to join us in this effort. This is about home ownership, this is about affordability, and this is about getting it right.

To the point the good Senator from Louisiana just made and as the Chair knows well, in the great State of North Dakota we have the Red River Basin, the Cheyenne River Basin, we have the James River Basin, we have the Missouri River Basin, the Devils Lake Basin, and more. So we know flooding, and we have seen it from year to year.

There are a number of provisions in this bill which the Senator has already identified which are critically important, and I will not repeat those, but I wish to focus for a minute on the basement exemption.

Legislation to preserve the basement exemption was included in the Hoeven-Heitkamp Flood Safe Basements Act, S. 1601. That has been incorporated into this bill. As sponsors, we appreciate that very much because this is a collaborative effort to get it right as we make this transition in flood insurance rates and make sure we protect the affordability on a fair basis as we move to financial viability for the long term for flood insurance rates.

When a homeowner has put the cost into making sure they have a flood-proof basement, if we don't take that into account in the insurance rates, we are penalizing them and we are charging them twice. It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all. That is why we have to have the basement exemption continued in this legislation, and that is why its sponsors, on a bipartisan basis, are not only pursuing this as stand-alone legislation, but we are also introducing it as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill or other legislation that can move, because we need to address it and we need to address it now.

As the Chair well knows, the mayor of a small community in northeast North Dakota, which has seen repeated flooding, contacted our congressional delegation and said: Hey, look. What is going on with FEMA right now is they are changing these flood insurance rates, and we have examples of homeowners who are going from less than $1,000 a year to more than $5,000 a year--a fivefold increase--and it is not a new home. The home has been there a long time and it has never been flooded.

It has never been flooded, and they are going to go from less than $1,000 to $5,000 on a home that has been there for a long time and never been flooded? That is not how this is supposed to work. That is not how it is supposed to work, and that is why we need this legislation.

Again, I thank the good Senator from Louisiana. All of the sponsors--and we have a great bipartisan group going already--urge our colleagues to join us, and we urge them to join us without delay. We seek a common objective: We will adjust the flood insurance rates to make sure the program is viable for the long term, but we need to get it right, and that is what this is all about.

I yield the floor.

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