Promoting Flood Risk Mitigation Act

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member and the gentlewoman from Nevada from the committee of jurisdiction on this issue.

During the markup of the National Flood Insurance Program, a number of us suggested that perhaps there is a way to help this bankrupt program save substantial funds. Right now, the program is $20 billion in debt, and we have a temporary extension from the March omnibus that expires in July.

The issue is that 2 percent of the properties in America have accounted for 24 percent of the spending by the National Flood Insurance Program. More than 30,000 of them have flooded five times each and been rebuilt by the

bankrupt Federal Flood Insurance Program. Some have flooded more than 30 times.

This is insanity, that we would keep rebuilding in these flood-prone areas, rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding, and piling up debt and raising the insurance premiums for everybody else on the program who presents way less risk.

So we decided that a way to go would be to provide a significant incentive to these people, and the incentive would be that they would have an agreed-upon contract with FEMA to purchase their property at preflood market value, and they would also get a discount on their Federal flood insurance. So they get the discount on the insurance and have entered into an agreement to sell the property to FEMA at the full market price. FEMA would remove the structures, and it would be turned into open space that would continue to flood repeatedly, but we wouldn't have to pay anything to rebuild it.

We proposed that. The House Republicans said, oh, they thought it would be too expensive. We don't know if it would be too expensive. It is 2 percent and 24 percent of the costs. I don't think it is going to be more expensive. I think it is going to save a heck of a lot of money.

So this bill would have the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, study this proposal and set up a pilot program to see if, indeed, it would facilitate cost savings and avoid the repeated rebuilding of flood-prone structures and have willing takers on the other side.

The other real incentive is that, if someone has finally tired of it the fifth time their house was flooded and they want out, that process now takes 2 to 5 years and involves a whole lot of negotiations over value, preflood value, and all that sort of thing. Here you get an agreed-upon preflood value; you get a discount on your flood insurance; and you just walk away. FEMA will take care of the rest, the removal of the rubble and turning that into open space.

So I think this would be one thing we need to do to help the Federal Flood Insurance Program, which is critical. Thirty-four thousand people in my State have it. I have had Federal insurance; I don't have it anymore. But this is a critical program for many, many people who are only very, very occasionally going to be flooded, but they can't get a mortgage unless they have flood insurance.

Mr. Speaker, I recommend this bill strongly to my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his work on this bill. I thank the gentlewoman from Nevada for her work on this bill. It is a bipartisan bill because it makes commonsense. So whether it is DeFazio or Blumenauer or Duffy--go down the list of different people who have worked on it--they have worked on something that makes eminent commonsense, and I want to thank them for their efforts.

The saying is: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But the corollary to that is: If it is broken, fix it.

What we have just heard are any number of different conversations about the degree to which the buyout program is not just a little bit broken but a whole lot broken.

First off, just at an individual level, it captures people in a hamster wheel that they can never get out of. If you look at the average buyout time, it is about 5 years. In that 5-year time period, people are stuck there waiting and waiting and waiting as their house, in many cases, refloods.

I have been to Shadowmoss in the West Ashley section of Charleston. I remember going in there after a flood. Those people who had a second story had carried stuff up to the second story. Those who didn't were just dealing with the flooding as it occurred on the first floor. But they had been repeatedly flooded.

So at an individual level, this makes sense for the remedy that it offers an individual, so they are not stuck in a house that is repeatedly flooding, as they are trapped in dealing with that.

It makes sense based on what Mother Nature is telling us.

My colleague from Nevada mentioned this notion of climate change. I don't know exactly what is going on, but I know that in Charleston, South Carolina, if you compare the 1950s with the present day, there is 10 times more flooding in what they call king tides, and it has become regular. Something is going on out there that says this buyout program needs to be adjusted, and it needs to be adjusted now.

The final point I would make is that this makes, as has been registered thus far, a whole lot of sense for the taxpayer, because if you look at the numbers, again, 30,000 homes in America have been flooded five or more times with substantial consequence to the taxpayer. We are talking about $5.5 billion being spent by the taxpayer in rebuilding and repairing. Destroy and repair is the term my colleague from Nevada used. The destroy-and-repair, destroy-and-repair cycle is destructive for the taxpayer.

It is for that reason that everybody from the State floodplain managers to the National Association of Realtors to the Nature Conservancy has supported this measure. I cannot endorse it enough, and I thank the gentleman for his work on it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5846, the Promoting Flood Risk Mitigation Act, as amended.

This bill was brought to us by my colleague from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

The bill requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study of the efficacy of buyouts of flood-prone property acquired by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and examine ways to streamline funding to provide more timely assistance to a larger number of State and local governments.

One only needs to look at last year's hurricane season to see the devastating impacts of these intense storms that were caused by climate change and what they did to our communities. Unfortunately for many residents, the damage and destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were not occurring for the first time but for a second or third time. These homes have been flooded and then had to be repaired with Federal assistance.

In order to stop this endless repairing and rebuilding of homes in floodplain areas, we must find ways to encourage more homeowners to agree to having their homes bought out, as well as ways to encourage State and local governments to purchase more of these properties.

The bill before you requires the GAO to assess the feasibility of a pilot program that, in exchange for a credit on their flood insurance premiums, property owners would be able to agree, before a flood occurs, to have their residence bought out if their residence is later substantially damaged by flood. The study would also examine the role that nonprofit organizations could play in making buyouts more readily available and more efficient.

We must stop the cycle of destroy, rebuild, destroy, rebuild. This study is a good first step to assess the benefits of buyouts and the feasibility of potential solutions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), who is the ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to further discuss this.

Mr. Speaker, I, once again, urge passage of this legislation and all the bills that we have brought before you today from this subcommittee.

I want to thank our chairman, Mr. Barletta, for working with us across the aisle on these bipartisan bills.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R 5846) to require the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a study regarding the buyout practices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 5846, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5846, as amended, the Promoting Flood Risk Mitigation Act, requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study and issue a report to Congress regarding the flood buyout practices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The removal of homes and buildings that have been repeatedly flooded to avoid future disaster damages and losses is a critical mitigation technique.

These mitigation measures not only save lives but also reduce disaster costs by minimizing the risk of future damage from disasters. Studies have shown that for every $1 invested in mitigation, there is a potential savings of $4 to $8, because of damages avoided.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford).

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 5846, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.