Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. First, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for letting me butt in a little bit.

I also praise the three people who are on the floor, one can say without each of whom this would not have happened. I don't think we can say that about anyone else here, myself included, but you can say that about these three. Senator Menendez, our lead sponsor on the bill, who is indomitable and smart about crafting legislation; Johnny Isakson, who was able to make this a bipartisan bill and in his gentle, friendly, and persuasive way brought many people on board, prevented people from blocking it; and the dynamo--we would all agree--the dynamo of this operation, Senator Mary Landrieu, who did not quit. I would say Mary Landrieu and I have had probably 200 phone calls in the last month about flood insurance--three or four a day. Whenever there was a blockage, she was like a jackhammer getting through it. So I thank her.

I am going to be very brief as well--not quite as brief as my colleague from Georgia, but brief for me and brief for the Senate.

This is a very important day for the people of New York. We have thousands of homeowners who either have had their flood insurance rise or are fearful of their flood insurance rising. Most of them are middle-class people in places such as Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Rockaways, out to the southern shore of Long Island and up the Hudson River. To be a homeowner is to have your little piece of the rock if you are a middle-class person. Basically, it is all you own. To have that taken away from you by an irrational Washington force called Biggert-Waters made no sense. Yet, when people's flood insurance bills would go up from $500 to $4,000, when they were told if they sold their house it might go up to $10,000, their piece of the rock--their home--was in true jeopardy.

We all know there is an increase in flooding. We all know the huge damage Katrina and Sandy caused. But to put it on the backs of homeowners, as FEMA was doing by both increasing rates and expanding flood maps beyond what flood zones should be made no sense.

We had so many people in New York who were damaged--I know this is true of my colleague from New Jersey as well--who were damaged by Sandy, who painstakingly rebuilt their home, getting some money from insurance and some money from FEMA and some money from Sandy and going to relatives and friends. After their home was finally rebuilt to be told, now here is your $5,000 flood insurance bill, when these people are in debt, it was awful, a double whammy.

This bill isn't perfect, but it will stop all of that. It grandfathers homes in so people who sell their homes will not see the price go way up, and because of the efforts we made in the Senate, the bill the House is sending us has an individual limit on how much flood insurance can go up. Eighteen percent is still not as low an amount as we would like--and we may be able to revisit that down the road--but it certainly is not a 700-, 2,000- or 5,000-percent increase, which is what people were getting.

So this is a good day. It is a good day for the shorefront areas of New York which contain close to 1 million people. It is a good day for the coastal areas throughout America, the areas by rivers throughout America. Do you know what it means? It means that the American dream of working hard, buying a home, and having your little piece of the rock will not be destroyed by some unknown, misunderstood, and irrational force from Washington on flood insurance. Flood insurance will now be a friend once again rather than a foe.

I yield the floor.

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