Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2954, Public Access and Lands Improvement Act, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3964, Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. WATERS. I thank the gentleman from Florida for allowing me to take some time to be on this floor to plead with my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle to join with us in support of our middle class citizens who now have their homes at risk.

Mr. Speaker, I plead with the opposite side of the aisle to join with what is a bipartisan piece of legislation, a bicameral piece of legislation, legislation that was passed out by the Senate that would correct the unintended consequences of the Biggert-Waters Act.

Why am I so passionate about this? First of all, I was a coauthor of the Biggert-Waters Act. It was a bill that we got together on where we tried to reduce the debt that we are confronted with, providing assistance and subsidies to our homeowners.

Many of our homeowners, as you know, across this country are put at risk. Their homes are destroyed through natural disasters. We have to be available to them through this kind of insurance program, the National Flood Insurance Program.

So we have the Senate, we have Republicans, we have Democrats who have all joined in with us to do something very simple: delay this for a time period. Delay this for 4 years so we can get on FEMA, and FEMA can get it right.

FEMA messed up the Biggert-Waters bill. We said, You have to do an affordability study. They did not do that. We said, You have to get your mapping and your remapping right. They have not done that. We said, Get a credible database. They have not done that.

We have got to correct FEMA. There is no reason why people should be having their premiums increased by 500 percent. This is wrong. We can do something about it. Don't stand in the way of coming to the assistance of American citizens who depend on us in their time of trouble.

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