NU Online News Service, May 21, 1:44 p.m. EDT
An effort is underway to attach a long-term National Flood Insurance Program reauthorization and reform legislation to bipartisan drug legislation in the Senate.
"We are hopeful of this all getting resolved this week, but it's difficult to say for sure as of today," says Matt Gannon, assistant vice president for federal affairs at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies.
Under the proposal now being negotiated, S. 1940, the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2011, would be attached to S. 3187, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act.
In conjunction with this effort, a short-term NFIP extension would have to be either voted on or attached to the FDA legislation to allow the Senate and House time to reconcile their respective five-year extension bills.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, is making a push for prompt action on a long-term NFIP reauthorization, and he has the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Coburn is fed up with short-term extensions based on empty promises of a future Senate vote, according to Gannon and Ray Lehmann, director of public affairs for the R Street Institute, formerly a part of the Heartland Institute.
"Only with an actual Senate vote this week would Coburn and the House accept a clean 30-Day extension, needed to conference the two bills and send one to the president's desk," Gannon says.
The last hurdle is a demand by Sens. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., to have Sec. 107 removed from the Senate bill, which would expand coverage requirements to "areas of residual risk" located behind levees, or near dams or other flood-control structures.
Cochran says Sec. 107 creates new flood-insurance coverage mandates on families and businesses that are already protected by strong levees and dams. "The blanket approach taken in the current bill should be changed in order to ensure fair treatment for those protected properties," Cochran says.
Gannon said NAMIC supports Pryor's proposals for a floor vote on his amendment deleting Sec. 107, but notes that at the same time, NAMIC supports Sec. 107 in the current bill.
"There are 30,000 miles of levees in the U.S. and they fail all the time," Gannon says. "The current NFIP debt is actually as high as it is because of failed levees in New Orleans in 2005."
Gannon adds, "I know that Arkansas has invested heavily in their levee system along the Mississippi," Gannon said. "But to claim the levees will never fail, we think, gives people a false sense of security. It calls to mind the 'unsinkable' Titanic and the designer's intentional shortage of lifeboats."
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