The White House, never a big fan of TRIA, still wants federal involvement in the terrorism risk market to phase out, according to Allan Hubbard, an assistant to the President for economic policy and a director of the National Economic Council. The President believes, in the long run, that TRIA is not needed, he said.

At a Congressional hearing last week on TRIA held just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, at least two members expressed strong opposition to any permanent extension–Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., and Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo. This was not intended to be a permanent fix, Rep. Garrett said. We have talked about how we scaled back in the first extension, and now we should see how we can scale it back even further.

The problem is that if Congress raises deductibles much higher, the program might be worthless for anything but the most devastating attack imaginable.

The lesson here is that insurers, producers and risk managers should definitely not take it for granted that TRIA will survivecertainly not for the long haul.

Having Democrats in charge of Congress helps, but only to a point. Despite being lambasted by Republicans as the party that is supposedly weak on national security issues, the Democrats have always been a stronger proponent of TRIA than the GOP, many of whose members prefer leaving terrorism exposures to the not-so-tender mercies of the free market, which has yet to show much appetite for such potentially enormous losses.

Thus, your best bet is to call, e-mail and, better yet, visit your representative in Congress today and make the case for TRIA.

Bottom line, TRIA will surviveno politician would dare vote against anything with terrorism in the title and risk being called soft on terrorism in next years critical election. Such sentiments might win the day in arguing for expansion of TRIA coverage as well, although I think that's more of a long shot.

But expect insurers to be forced to absorb an even bigger deductible before federal reinsurance kicks in–and forget, for now, any hope of making TRIA permanent. Unfortunately, I believe nothing short of another attempted terrorist attack could make that happen politically.

What do you folks make of all of this???