NU Online News Service, July 15, 10:57 a.m. EDT
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., today characterized as "absurd" a decision by House officials not to allow a floor vote on an amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program that would add wind coverage to the program.
The insurance industry opposes adding wind to the program. In one comment earlier Wednesday, an official of the Property Casualty Insurers Association said adding wind to the program would be a "bad policy decision."
Ben McKay, PCI senior vice president, federal government relations, explained that "adding wind coverage could dislocate thousands of private sector jobs, pushing them to the public sector."
He said the amendment would also impact the amount of premium taxes states get, "so it's going to hit states' bottom lines, and we all know that states at this point need every dollar they can get."
House floor action on the bill, H.R. 5114, the "Flood Insurance Reform and Priorities Act of 2010," is now underway.
But, the Rules Committee last night declined to rule in order Rep. Taylor's amendment adding wind coverage after the House parliamentarian said the amendment was "not germane" to the legislation.
According to Rep. Taylor, the amendment was not ruled germane because the bill is about flood insurance, not wind insurance.
Rep. Taylor has been critical of the industry ever since he lost his home to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
He and then-Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., both sued State Farm because of dissatisfaction with the way their claims were handled. Both later settled out of court with State Farm.
"This is an absurd ruling," he said.
He said the amendment would have amended the NFIP Act to create an option in the National Flood Insurance Program to combine flood insurance with wind insurance to create a better option to cover hurricane risk.
"The fact that the flood insurance program is essential to multiple peril coverage should make it germane to the five-year authorization of the flood program," he said in comments to NU Online News Service today.
In fact, he said, "This may be the only bill to which the multiple peril amendment could be offered."
Rep. Taylor said that the parliamentarian's position is the procedural equivalent of "Anti-Concurrent Causation."
"Instead of having an insurer say that any amount of flood damage cancels coverage of all the wind damage to a property, here we have the parliamentarian saying that any mention of wind insurance cancels the germaneness of all the flood insurance in the amendment," Rep. Taylor said.
In other words, he said, "a member of Congress can offer an amendment to combine flood insurance and wind insurance only to a bill that already combines flood insurance and wind insurance.
"I am still waiting for him to show me that in the Rules and Precedents of the House," Rep. Taylor said.
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