Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

House delays NFIP bill consideration

Reprints
House delays NFIP bill consideration

The House of Representatives has delayed consideration of a flood insurance bill that would have maintained subsidies for some policyholders under the National Flood Insurance Program.

A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said that consideration of the bill — initially scheduled for Wednesday — had been delayed because Republicans were “working with Democrats on the details of bill.” He said that the measure, the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013 — H.R. 3370 — could be brought to the House floor next week.

The bill had come under fire from some insurance and environmental groups as well as free-market oriented think tanks as an assault on reforms made to the NFIP by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012. In addition to maintaining subsidies for some policyholders, the bill would have repealed a section of the Biggert-Waters law that called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to update its flood maps.

The House slated consideration of the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act shortly after the Senate passed its own flood insurance legislation. The Senate bill calls for delaying for four years the Biggert-Waters law's requirement that the NFIP charge risk-based rates.

During a telephone briefing by SmarterSafer.org — a coalition of insurer, free-market and environmental groups that oppose both the House and Senate bills — Steve Ellis, vice president of Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that the House delay presented the opportunity for “responsible reform.”