With President Obama signing a 60-day National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) extension bill on May 31, a lapse in the program has been avoided—but industry officials are wasting no time looking to the next phase and calling on the Senate to act on a five-year extension.
Ben McKay, senior vice president of federal government relations for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, says that although PCI is pleased that the 60-day extension avoided a lapse, “this only delays the fundamental debate over the future of the flood-insurance program. We remain hopeful that the Senate will schedule floor time for its long-term NFIP reauthorization and reform bill in June.”
“It is now time for the Senate to move forward on [its five-year-extension bill] before the clock runs out on this latest short-term extension,” says Tom Santos, vice president of federal affairs at the American Insurance Association.
Mike Becker, assistant vice president of federal affairs for the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA), points out, “For the first time in a very long time, a consensus seems to have formed around the need to enact a long-term reauthorization of the NFIP that incorporates needed reforms.”
Becker says the Senate's expressed commitment to prompt action on its version of the legislation “is even more significant.”
In light of this commitment, he says the PIA is “cautiously optimistic that the NFIP can finally be put on a sound footing for many years, providing needed certainty and ending the off-again, on-again stopgap reauthorizations, which is no way to run a flood-insurance program.”
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