A bill to ensure that holders of flood insurance policies under the National Flood Insurance Program do not receive premium refunds for coverage of second homes.

I wish to speak on this for 2 minutes now, because I know people are anxious to vote on final passage of this important bill, and I will speak at length after the vote.

I just wish to say thank you to the two leaders who are on the floor, Senator Menendez from New Jersey, Senator Johnny Isakson from Georgia. They were the team who brought the coalition together when it was very hard--and still is difficult--to build a coalition on any subject. This subject is complicated. It is difficult. There are very strong feelings on all sides. There are different parts of the country that look at this in different ways, and there are debts that need to be paid attached to this program. So this was not an easy negotiation, and the leaders both did an extraordinary job keeping us on track.

No. 2, this compromise--and that is what it represents--the best of the compromise was, in fact, debated at length on this Senate floor; it was debated at length in the House of Representatives; and it was voted on 67 to 32 in the Senate favorably and 306 to 91 in the House favorably. The minority view--represented by the Senator from Utah, which would throw this bill into a conference committee right now--is not what the American people want, and it is not what the majority of Republicans or the majority of Democrats want, as demonstrated by the vote I just put into the Record.

We could all take this bill and rewrite sections of it that would work better for our home State, but that is not what this place is about. This place is not about perfection. It is about the art of the possible, and it is about listening to our constituents and responding to them when they have a great need.

In the State of Louisiana, I have 400,000 people who are afraid they will lose their homes. For many of these families, that is the greatest asset they have, and they are close to losing it. They don't want us to go to the conference committee and perfect this bill. They want us to pass it today, right now, and that is what I think we are going to do.

I know the Senator from Utah is disappointed. He may know the masters of the universe, but I am still looking for them. I could use a lot more wisdom and strength. If they are around here, I would like them to present themselves. All we have right now is each other--human beings trying to do the very best we can with a difficult circumstance. It may not be a perfect bill, but the concept of this bill got 67 votes in the Senate and 306 votes in the House. We have passed it in record time, given the pace around here. I am very proud.

I see the Senator from Florida. I know he would like to say a word.

Yes.

I yield and turn the floor over to the leader, Senator Menendez. I believe the time will be yielded back.

Madam President, when Hurricane Betsy roared ashore in Grand Isle on September 9, 1965, it wrought havoc in Louisiana and Mississippi and became the first natural disaster to cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion. It fundamentally changed the way our nation prepared for and responded to disasters. Private insurers fled the market, making it necessary for the federal government to step in and help communities rebuild and recover. The National Flood Insurance Program established building standards for flood prone areas to limit communities' exposure to flooding and rewarded responsible homeowners with affordable flood insurance that was no longer available in the private market.

In response, Congress, led by Hale Boggs, passed the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 with the explicit goal of making ``. . . flood insurance available on reasonable terms and conditions . . .''

Affordability was one of the primary goals of the National Flood Insurance Program when it was created, and it remains an essential priority today. Unfortunately, affordability was virtually eliminated by the 2012 NFIP reform legislation known as Biggert-Waters, and we had to fight to get it reinstated in the compromise bill that cleared the House last Wednesday, March 5 with a strong, bipartisan vote of 306-91.

On January 16, Speaker Boehner flatly refused to consider comprehensive flood insurance reform legislation in the House, telling an AP reporter bluntly: ``We're not going to do that.'' The decisive 67-32 Senate vote to pass the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act on January 30 demonstrated the breadth and depth of our coalition and provided the necessary momentum for House leadership to get engaged and support this strategy.

Senior leaders of both parties worked closely with Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Cedric Richmond, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Rep. Michael Grimm to reach a fair, bipartisan, bicamercal compromise that can get to the President's desk, and we owe it to our constituents to act as soon as possible with an up or down vote.

The National Flood Insurance Program is one of the earliest examples of large scale community planning in America. It made community based mitigation a requirement for rebuilding. In order to be eligible for federally subsidized, low-cost flood insurance, communities had to pass ordinances restricting future development in floodplains. Taxpayers for Common Sense, the National Wildlife Federation and others would have you believe that NFIP encourages development in flood plains, but the reality is that it does the exact opposite.

By removing affordability from the core of the National Flood Insurance Program, Biggert-Waters put every policyholder on the path to Full Risk Rates whatever they may be. Speaking in support of the compromise bill, Steve Scalise, my colleague from Louisiana and Chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, explained the problem clearly and directly saying:

``Sending somebody a $10,000 or a $20,000-a-year bill on a $200,000 house that never flooded is not an actuarially sound rate. It's a death sentence.''

Whether it takes 2 years or 20 years to get there, full risk rates of $20,000 or more will continue to freeze the housing market, depress property values, and prevent responsible homeowners from purchasing flood insurance. Program participation is already anemic with just over half--60 percent--of those required by law to have flood insurance in compliance and even less market penetration in low-risk areas where we want people to purchase voluntary flood insurance policies to grow and diversify the risk pool. The Senate bill delayed the worst rate increases until FEMA completed the affordability study and proposed an affordability framework to protect people from impossibly high premiums.

This indiscriminate march to Full Risk Rates is further complicated by a fundamentally flawed mapping process that wipes local levees off the maps and excludes impacted communities from the mapping process. At my request last summer, David Miller, Association Administrator for the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration--the man in charge of the National Flood Insurance Program, stood on top of a $450 million levee in Lafourche Parish that was completely wiped off the map when FEMA released their new flood map in 2008. Their map remains under appeal to this day.

The parish was one of 25 sites nationally included in the pilot program for FEMA's new Levee Analysis and Mapping Procedures, LAMP, that were designed to fix this problem, but that process only began last summer and has a long way to go before it is ready for prime time. The Senate bill delayed rate increases based on new flood maps until FEMA certified that their maps were accurate and reliable.

Whereas the Senate sought to delay the worst parts of Biggert-Waters until maps were accurate and the affordability study was complete, the House took a different approach by repealing these provisions and replacing them with other annual fees and rate increases. We had a healthy discussion and debate about our two approaches and eventually arrived at a compromise we could all live with that will protect people from the most aggressive rate hikes included in Biggert-Waters.

I commend Rep. Waters and Rep. Richmond for the leadership in reinstating affordability as an essential element of this program. Since Representative Cantor unveiled his bill on February 21, we successfully amended it to include an 18 percent annual cap on individual premium increases and an overall affordability target of 1 percent of the value of the policy.

While I would have preferred lower annual premium increases and stricter standards on overall affordability, this bill is a decent compromise that will address the most pernicious pieces of Biggert- Waters and attract the bipartisan support necessary to get it to the President's desk. This is another important step in our ongoing efforts to provide affordable, accessible and sustainable flood insurance to middle class Americans, but this bill is not the

end of the battle. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is permanent.

After nearly 2 years of arduous work and steadfast determination by a broad coalition of individuals, business groups and community leaders, the most pernicious provisions and draconian rate increases of Biggert- Waters have successfully been stopped and affordability has been returned as the centerpiece of the National Flood Insurance Program. The passionate debate we had during the last 2 years--one that will continue--has shown that affordable flood insurance is about more than just actuarial numbers on a page. It is about protecting our unique culture, our treasured way of life, and preserving the historic coastal communities that built this nation and continue to drive its economy today.

As Chair of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, I will hold FEMA accountable for implementing this bill in a timely and transparent manner that provides homeowners and housing markets with the immediate relief they need to recover from these draconian rate hikes. Over the course of the past week, we were able to improve the original Cantor bill by removing onerous and unnecessary bureaucratic provisions, but I am not confident that FEMA will execute this either efficiently or effectively.

The great coalition of home builders, realtors, bankers, insurance agents, mayors, local governments and individual homeowners that fought to make flood insurance reform a national priority must remain vigilant and engaged. The National Flood Insurance Program expires in 2017, and we will need to include strict affordability language to protect responsible homeowners from impossible premiums.

The compromise bill that passed the House last week with a vote of 306-91 has the support of the coalition that helped secure the strong 67-32 vote in the Senate earlier this year. Some of the key industry groups behind the bill are:

Greater New Orleans Inc--GNO Inc,

National Association of Realtors,

National Home Builders Association,

National Association of Counties--NACo,

National League of Cities,

American Bankers Association,

Independent Community Bankers of America, and the

Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America--Big

``I''.

Biggert-Waters was built backwards and upside down. It authorized immediate rate increases on responsible homeowners without any understanding of how they would impact individual policyholders or the program at large and before FEMA was able to certify that their maps are accurate and reliable.

Lafourche Parish has been appealing their new map since 2008 because FEMA cannot figure out how to give them credit for local levees, including an 8-16 foot, 40 mile ring levee that was authorized by Congress in 1965--the Larose to Golden Meadow Hurricane Protection Project. To date, $450 million has been invested in this project, including $200 million from the Federal government. This past summer, FEMA began a pilot program that is supposed to solve the problem, but it will be another 2-3 years before that process is complete. FEMA needs to get their flood maps right the first time.

Currently, only 60 percent of the homeowners and businesses that are REQUIRED to have flood insurance actually do, and the aggressive rate increases authorized under Biggert-Waters threaten to make that problem a whole lot worse. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that every 10 percent increase in premiums leads to a 3 percent drop in overall program participation.

Katherine in Houma, LA cannot sell her home because a pernicious provision in Biggert-Waters that immediately increases premiums hundreds or thousands of dollars when you sell your house. When the young couple that was trying to buy her house went to closing, they learned that the flood insurance would go from $1,400 to $8,000 and could no longer afford the house. Katherine is stuck with a house she cannot sell and insurance she cannot afford.

Biggert-Waters threatens the very foundation of home ownership, the cornerstone of the American Dream. Fixing this flawed legislation is about protecting people's homes and equity and preserving the American dream that if you work hard and play by the rules you can have a secure future.

Our bill structures NFIP in an affordable, comprehensive and sustainable way. For decades, the program was sustainable until the 2005 storm season resulted in an unprecedented $17 billion in claims. Prior to that, it had an annual average deficit of just $19 million per year.

This is not just a Louisiana or coastal issue. Fifty-five percent of our nation's population lives within 50 miles of the coast--and that doesn't include those living along inland waterways. Ten percent of the homes in the United States have a one-in-four chance of flooding in the lifetime of their mortgage.

In 2010, the 15 percent of U.S. counties that are located directly on open ocean, the Great Lakes, major estuaries or coastal flood plains contributed $8.3 trillion--55 percent--to the Nation's Gross Domestic Product, and these communities proved more resilient during the 2007 recession, actually growing employment by 1.4 percent while the national employment rate fell by 2.3 percent.

This is not about millionaires in mansions on the beach. This is about middle class Americans who need affordable flood insurance so they can live where they need to work to harvest fresh seafood, produce domestic energy, and manufacture and transport the goods we need to maintain America's competitive advantage in the 21st century.

In response to all the concern I have heard from my constituents, I launched ``My Home, My Story'' to show you, literally, show some of the people and properties facing these rate increases that we are aiming to help. These aren't mansions, these aren't millionaires. These are middle class, working people living in normal, middle class houses doing their best to raise their kids, contribute to their communities and make a living.

I received over a hundred pictures and stories from my constituents.

Cody put his home on the market for less than its value and still couldn't sell it because of the high premium on his flood insurance.

Rachel lives in a 1,000 square foot elevated home with no central air or heat, one small bathroom, a quaint front porch and a beautiful sycamore tree. Three months after moving in, her flood insurance increased by $750 per year, and she's is struggling to make payments.

Maggie is a 66-year-old woman who has lived in the same house since 1974 and plans to stay there for the remainder of her life. She lives on a very strict budget and just received her first Social Security payment. If the law is not changed, it will be impossible for her to stay in her home or sell her home.

It provides basic consumer protections to responsible homeowners who built to code and played by the rules are struggling to stay in the

Mr. President, I rise to urge a ``yes'' vote for final passage of the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, the legislation we are here to consider. I will say the Senate went through a considerate, deliberate process where amendments were openly considered. I believe at the end of the process there was a 67-to-32 vote. We don't normally get two-thirds of the Senate agreeing on major issues, but we did at that time in a bipartisan effort.

My understanding is the legislation that ultimately we are considering today, which is basically foundationally what we agreed to here with some changes in the House, for which there was vigorous back- and-forth negotiation, passed by over 300 votes of the House of Representatives. So it seems to me it has a broad bipartisan support and was vigorously debated in that Chamber.

We have an opportunity to once again, after the bill we just passed, show this body can work. We had a respectable debate on good-faith amendments that were germane to the bill, lived up to the ideals of the Senate when it was before us. We were able to have bipartisan negotiations to improve the House-passed version of our bill so it would provide the levels of relief that are necessary. As a result, we are now poised to pass some critical legislation with overwhelmingly bipartisan support which provides real relief to millions of American families.

Just very briefly, because I hope to basically not use all the time so we can come to a vote and get our Members on their way, this new legislation is first of all budget neutral. It does not add a dime to the deficit, nor does it hurt the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program. It prevents skyrocketing rate increases by implementing the following measures: One, it creates a firewall on annual rate increases. It repeals the property sales trigger that was depressing the values of homes. It repeals the new policy sales trigger. It reinstates grandfathering. It refunds homeowners who overpaid. It has something that I thought was critically important, that I thought was so important when we passed Biggert-Waters that I included it by amendment in the banking committee--an affordability goal.

Let us have the ability to ensure the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program, but let us have an affordability mechanism which FEMA was, under the law that exists today, required to report to the Congress so we could ultimately come up with an affordability mechanism that would ensure that we have a solvent program and that we have an affordable program.

At the end of the day, insurance is about spreading risk over a wide pool and in doing so keeping rates affordable. With rates that I heard from homeowners in New Jersey that went from $1,000 to $10,000 or $15,000, not only is that not affordable but you are going to ultimately reduce the size of the risk pool in the National Flood Insurance Program. That means that is going to continue to drive up the cost, and we have a self-fulfilling cycle that ultimately does not provide for solvency.

So we have kept some of the most important reforms under Biggert- Waters, but we created a window of opportunity to make sure we get to affordability, that we help the real estate market, at a time when it desperately needs help, to be able to continue to prosper. The people's most significant asset in their life was built over a lifetime to buy a home, and that is where they ultimately have their greatest asset. It is where they leverage for their kid's education or emergency in health care and a whole host of plans for retirement.

So for millions of people in my State and across the country who ultimately did the right thing, followed rules, paid their premiums, met the higher standards, now to be told that in addition to--in New Jersey's case the consequences of Hurricane Sandy, and throughout the Northeast, flooding in Colorado or the Mississippi or a whole host of other places--but despite the fact they did everything right, through no fault of their own and having paid their fees, they are now in rate shock, an inability to keep flood insurance, which sometimes triggers a default on the mortgage, if they have a mortgage, or makes it impossible to sell their home.

That is what we are rectifying. It is our collective purpose. I urge a strong ``yes'' vote.

Finally, I wish to thank my colleagues who have worked with me on a bipartisan basis: My lead cosponsor Senator Isakson. I don't believe there is anybody in the Senate who has a greater depth of knowledge in the real estate industry and how this legislation affects that but also understands the consequences of individual families and is working in an incredibly strong way so we can get to this bipartisan moment. I appreciate all of his work.

Also, I have to say the tenaciousness and the ability to bring us to this point is that of Senator Landrieu, who has become an expert out of necessity from what happens in her State with Hurricane Katrina. The people of Louisiana are extraordinarily fortunate to have her as one of their Senators. She has been a guiding light throughout this process, tremendously helpful in getting us to today.

Lastly, I appreciate the leadership on both sides to get us to this moment so we could have this vote.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand we are going to be able to act on the Lee bill with a voice vote. As a result, I ask consent that the order with respect to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold with respect to S. 2137 be vitiated with all of the provisions of the previous order remaining in effect.

Mr. President, in the interest of getting this bill to the President's desk and giving relief to flood victims across the country, and many other homeowners, we yield back the remainder of our time and ask for the yeas and nays.

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.

Mr. President, this particular bill has not been examined in committee--not in the Senate, not even in the House. It was rushed to the floor of the House without amendment, and it is rushed to the floor here without amendment. This is not how the legislative process is supposed to work--especially not here in the Senate.

My opponents may say we already had our chance to impact this policy, but what we have before us now is a different bill--a bill which we have never seen before. This bill is not a conference report. It takes zero cues from the Senate bill. Not a single representative of the American people has been given the opportunity to offer even a single amendment to this legislation.

All I have been asking for is a vote on an amendment which eliminates certain insurance rebates for second homes. My amendment would not change homeowners' flood insurance policies or even reduce the new taxpayer subsidy we are going to give them. It simply removes a retroactive reimbursement for second homes. Essentially we ask that working families around the country, including taxpayers in my State, not have to cut an additional check to the owners of coastal vacation houses. I know of no one who objects to my provision on policy grounds. Let me repeat that. I don't know of anyone, not one person who has raised a policy objection to

the amendment I have offered. It is an objective improvement to the underlying policy and this is what the Senate is supposed to do. Yet the supporters of the bill have been blocking any amendments that may garner bipartisan support to hold together a deal that has been negotiated in a backroom, written in secret by only a few Members, perhaps with the influence of a few people who may be interested in that. These ``masters of the universe'' as my friend Senator Sessions has sometimes referred to them, are shutting the American people out of the process.

I asked for 10 minutes and a vote on a single unobjectionable germane amendment to a bill the public has never before seen, but it seems this may be a bridge too far for the ``masters of the universe,'' as my friend from Alabama likes to call them.

So in an effort hopefully to change one of the more offensive policies in the bill, one that provides a refund of premiums paid under the law to homeowners of second vacation homes from a program that is already $24 billion in the hole, I agree to a vote on my amendment as a stand-alone bill. I have assurances from the House majority leader that he will work to get the policy considered in the House and I take him at his word.

I urge my colleagues to support my bill to protect the American people from being asked to fund--to refund premiums paid under current law to owners of second homes and vacation homes.

I am going to be very brief in the interest of time. I wish to thank Senator Menendez for his leadership, Senator Landrieu for her leadership. Without their work this would not happen.

Let me tell you what this does. This bill corrects the unintended consequence of denying liquidity to coastal Americans in their housing and causing the unintended consequence of people not buying insurance and putting themselves and this country at greater risk in those areas that are

prone to floods. It aggressively addresses the need we have to make this system more solvent and make it work better.

The Senate today will be solving a greater problem for coastal American residents and those in flood areas. They will be doing the right thing at the right time to correct an unintended consequence of an action of the Congress. I am honored to be a part of it.

I commend Senator Menendez and Senator Landrieu and thank them for their effort.

I yield back my time.