The chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is calling for bipartisan support to extend the federal terrorism insurance backstop “well before” it expires on Dec. 31, 2014.

The program has been extended twice, most recently in 2007.

“The last time, Congress made very few changes and extended the program for seven years,” said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., on Wednesday during a hearing on the program which initially was created by the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere.

“While a few may seek dramatic changes or even try to eliminate the program, we should remember that taxpayers have not lost any money on the program,” said Sen. Johnson, who chairs the committee. “The program's unique structure has fully protected taxpayers while promoting economic growth by preventing interruptions in insurance coverage and providing certainty for commercial property developers working on stadiums, universities, malls and other projects across the country.”

“It is my hope that once again we will be able to find bipartisan consensus for the reauthorization of TRIA well before the program expires at the end of 2014,” he said.

One of the witnesses, Insurance Information Institute President Robert Hartwig, said the program has been an “unqualified success” and has become an “indispensable component” of national security. He said the cost to taxpayers has amounted to only “negligible administration costs.”

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“Without TRIA, though, American taxpayers might actually end up paying as much after a large terrorist attack through federal disaster relief,” said another witness, Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan, managing director of Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes Operations at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia.

“There will be an expectation for the federal government to pay for most of the uninsured economic losses” he said.

The third witness, Peter Beshar, executive vice president and general counsel of the Marsh & McLennan Cos. in New York, also supported extension of the program and reiterated a call for specific reforms that he had made to the House Financial Services Committee last week, including extending the program to cover cyber attack losses.

None of the senators participating in the hearing called for letting the program lapse next year. As Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., put it, the program is “absolutely essential.”