“Congress needs to stop playing games; we need to reform the National Flood Insurance Program immediately”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked Congress to finally get down to the business of creating a National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) that middle-class families can afford.  Sen. Kennedy previously introduced comprehensive, bipartisan legislation to reform the NFIP.  

Click here or the photo below to watch Sen. Kennedy’s full remarks:

 

Affordable Flood Insurance: “Weathering a hurricane is difficult enough without the added burden of trying to do it without insurance.  And a National Flood Insurance Program isn’t doing its job if it’s so expensive people can’t afford to buy it.  Unfortunately, that’s precisely what has happened in North and South Carolina.”

What Gives?: “Why don’t people have flood insurance?  Because the costs are out of control and middle-class families have little choice but to just roll the dice.  Because Congress keeps playing games and people don’t have faith that the NFIP will be around to pay off.  Because one or two members of Congress want to get a soundbite more than they want to help ordinary Americans protect their property.  And if those members want to reform the program because they want to save the government money, they’re going about it the wrong way.”

What It’s All About: “Recovering from a natural disaster is about more than putting up drywall: It’s about our communities coming back safer, stronger and better prepared.  The NFIP is an indispensable part of that effort to rebuild.  But a flood insurance program isn’t useful if it’s too complicated to understand, or if it allows bad actors to take from hardworking families.  We need rules that make sense, government websites that a normal person can navigate, quicker decisions by bureaucrats and a faster process to get disaster dollars to the folks who need them. Most importantly, though, people need to be able to afford buy a policy in the first place.”

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