A $25 annual surcharge on all NFIP primary home subscribers, and a $250 annual surcharge on all second homes and businesses, would partially pay for the rollbacks. This money would be would be placed into a trust fund to be used to cover increased claims during disasters.

It would also repeal would repeal entirely the section of the flood insurance reform law that calls on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to update its maps, according to R.J. Lehmann, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute. 

However, FEMA would still be allowed to use existing rules to slowly raise rates for those policies to more actuarially sound levels over a much longer period of time, according to people familiar with the legislation.

The bill will also give policyholders multiple options to manage and possibly reduce premiums by allowing for a higher deductible, monthly payments and expanding mitigation options.

Even though Democrats say they will continue efforts to improve the House bill, a Democratic staffer for a Louisiana House member said, "By and large, we are OK with the deal."

The staffer says the $250 surcharge is "a little rough," and the 15% "average" increase provision is also of concern.

Effectively, the staffer says Democrats want to use this legislation to get them through the next two years, after which they will start to negotiate a more acceptable bill that would go into effect when the current authorization ends Sept. 30, 2017.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chief negotiator for House Democrats, said Saturday, "I am encouraged by the progress we've made to advance legislation that will provide relief to those facing skyrocketing flood-insurance premiums."

She said over the next several days, she will continue active negotiations with Republican leadership, the bill's authors and members of the U.S. Senate.

Efforts to contact supporters of the Senate bill, including Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., were unsuccessful.

Beyond legislators, reaction was mixed. 

Lehmann voiced disappointment. He says the bill represents a "fundamental betrayal of the free-market principles and fiscal responsibility the House leadership claims to embrace.

"Less than two years after passing landmark reforms to fix the NFIP, which remains $25 billion in debt to American taxpayers, lawmakers appear poised to gut just about all of those reforms, all to score cheap political points."

Jimi Grande, senior vice president of federal and political affairs for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, agrees. Grande says the 2012 reforms passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and were designed to strengthen the NFIP and ensure it would be there for its millions of policyholders. 

"These efforts to roll back [2012's Biggert-Waters Act] may provide a short-term political benefit, but we continue to believe they will be a mistake for homeowners, NFIP policyholders and taxpayers as the program sees it finances further decline."

At the same time, Steve Harty, vice chairman of the National Flood Services, Kalispell, Mont., which handles the back-office work on the NFIP for many of the 83 Write-Your-Own insurance companies that administer the program, says the legislation will make it easier to administer the program. He says the 2012 law "created a significant amount of dislocation in the flood insurance and real-estate markets and we welcome the fact that H.R. 3370 goes a long way toward remedying those problems."

He says NFS has argued since October for the kind of "glide path"' to actuarially sound rates that the bill would offer. "The long-term health of the NFIP depends upon annual premium increases nearer to the new maximum than to the proposed minimum," Harty says.

A lobbyist for an insurance trade group who asked not to be named said a statement was being drafted that would be released at the latest Monday. But, the lobbyist said, as a preliminary matter, the "bill is good, much better than" the Senate's.