[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 107 (Thursday, June 26, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H6162-H6166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         REAUTHORIZATION OF THE FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM NEEDED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TAYLOR. Madam Speaker, let me begin by thanking all the men and 
women who work for the House of Representatives. I know that they are 
anxious to get out of town and begin their 4th of July holiday. But 
when we come back in July, it will be what I have considered over the 
course of my life the beginning of hurricane season, and we still have 
some unfinished business from Hurricane Katrina that affected my 
district and could potentially affect over half of all Americans, and 
that is the reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program.
  If Congress does not act by September, this program that is of vital 
importance to people in the Midwest from flooding, the people on the 
Gulf Coast because of hurricanes, the people in New England because of 
storms, this program is important to everyone, it may not get 
reauthorized, and I think it would put a lot of Americans in jeopardy. 
Therefore, I think it is important that we not only reauthorize it, but 
fix some of the problems that we have discovered in the wake of 
Hurricane Katrina.
  I want to begin with some homes from my hometown. This is one that 
belonged to Mr. and Mrs. John Hadden in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. 
If you take a look at it, it started about 10 feet off the ground. It 
had hurricane shutters. It had a low profile roof. It was built to be a 
hurricane-proof house. It was insured for about $650,000. This is what 
it looked like the day before Hurricane Katrina. This is what the 
family came home to when they could get back to Bay Saint Louis.
  I mentioned that they had $650,000 worth of insurance with their 
insurance company, State Farm. Almost 2 years to the day of that, they 
still had not been paid by State Farm Insurance Company. Corky is a 
financial planner. He thought he had done everything he should do. What 
he didn't realize is that he was dealing with a company that instead of 
saying ``we are your good neighbor,'' went out of its way not to pay 
him.
  This is another home, a much more traditional, older home. In fact, 
it was one of the oldest homes in my hometown of Bay Saint Louis. It 
belonged to Jody and Betty Benvenuti. They had it insured for $586,000.

                              {time}  2000

  Jody is in the insurance business. He understood the importance of 
it. He paid his premiums on time. He insured his home for what he 
thought it would cost to rebuild it. This is what it looked like when 
he evacuated, as he was ordered to by his Nation, the day before the 
storm. This is what he came home to. Within a couple of weeks, his good 
neighbor, the State Farm agent, informed him that he saw no evidence of 
wind damage, and therefore, he was going to get paid nothing on his 
homeowner's policy.
  Another home in South Mississippi, more of a typical South 
Mississippi home, belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Pat Street. $250,000 worth 
of insurance. Prior to the storm, prior to all of the inflation that 
has taken place since then, that probably would have been a very good 
amount to be insured for. It certainly should have covered the cost of 
replacing it should something bad have happened. Again, they were 
ordered to evacuate. So this is what their home looked like as they 
were leaving before the storm. That's what they came home to. Again, 
they were told by the insurance company we see no evidence of wind 
damage. Notice the tree is knocked over to different angles. So, 
therefore, we're not going to pay you the $250,000. We're going to pay 
you $9,000 on this policy.
  Madam Speaker, in South Mississippi, we asked the United States Navy 
to model what happened that day on August the 29th of 2005. What the 
Navy told us, I found, as a life-long resident of the gulf coast, to be 
pretty interesting. It's that we've always thought of maximum wind and 
maximum water occurring at the same time, but in the case of Hurricane 
Katrina, as you can see, category 2 and 3 force winds, which is up to 
140 miles an hour, actually occurred several hours before the water 
showed up. When I asked the Navy to explain that to me, they said it's 
pretty simple. You can push air a lot faster than you can push water. 
The storm was moving ahead of the water.
  So, basically, what it translates to is that homes like I just showed 
you were subjected to anywhere from 2-to-4-hours' worth of hurricane-
force winds before the water ever showed up. As a matter of fact, it's 
not just that area that we're talking about, but as to the entire State 
of Mississippi, the insurance companies actually paid claims on wind 
damage all the way from down here on the Mississippi gulf coast all the 
way up to Memphis, Tennessee. They paid claims in every county in the 
State of Mississippi.
  What was particularly interesting and what should be particularly 
interesting to the 53 percent of all Americans who live in coastal 
America is that the claims they chose not to pay were right down here 
where the winds were the strongest. They somehow would tell people that 
no, no, no. Your damage was not the result of wind. It was the result 
of water.
  This is in fairness to them. These are the areas in South Mississippi 
that were affected by both wind and water. This is where the flood 
went. For those of you familiar with that area, this is I-1 to I-10. It 
was designed to be a hurricane-proof road, and by and large, the 
designers did a very good job. They came close to doing that, but there 
were some areas north of I-10 that flooded.
  Our Nation has a plan to help people protect themselves in the event 
of a hurricane. Most prudent people whom I know, based on the fact that 
we have had other hurricanes in my lifetime--Hurricane Betsy and 
Hurricane Camille--don't know whether it's going

[[Page H6163]]

to be the wind. They don't know whether it's going to be the water. So 
a prudent homeowner buys a homeowner's policy. It's supposed to protect 
you in case of wind damage. If you buy a flood policy, it's supposed to 
protect you in case of flood.
  So the way the claims process should have worked is our Nation should 
have hired the insurance industry to go out and adjust a claim. If the 
wind did it, it should have, therefore, been covered under the 
homeowner's policy. The company would then pay out of its pocket those 
people who suffered wind damage. If the water did it, then folks who 
would be covered by the National Flood Insurance Program would have the 
Nation that would back that program. The Nation would pay the insurance 
industry to sell the policy. The Nation would pay the insurance 
industry to go out and adjust the claim. That way, we wouldn't have to 
have a lot of Federal employees who would be doing all of these things.
  Up until Hurricane Katrina, the program worked pretty well. With 
Hurricane Katrina, though, we saw a very different set of circumstances 
because what should have happened didn't happen. That insurance company 
that we were counting on to go out and adjust the claim and to make a 
fair, proper adjustment of the claim, in many instances, looked after 
its own best interest against the interest of the homeowner and, by the 
way, against the interest of the American taxpayer.
  Now, why is that?
  The law calls on the insurance companies to do a proper adjustment of 
the claim, and we give them total discretion as to who is going to 
adjust that claim. Think about it. I can't think of anyone else in 
America who can send a bill to the United States of America for 
$250,000 for the cost of that claim, another $100,000 for the cost of 
the contents, and no one second-guesses it, and no one looks over his 
shoulder and sees if it's a proper claim. In this instance, it was the 
case. So some insurers interpreted the law to allow them to blame 
everything on the water.
  What does that mean?
  It means that, for starters, a typical homeowner's policy says that, 
if your--the homeowner's--house gets hit by a meteor tonight or if your 
house catches on fire tonight or if a trucker loses control of his 
vehicle and, unfortunately, plows into your living room and your house 
is uninhabitable, a typical homeowner's policy will not only pay to get 
your house fixed; it will pay to put you up for up to 24 months until 
your house can be repaired. But when the insurance company walks onto 
your property and says, ``We see no evidence of wind damage. We're not 
going to pay your homeowner's policy,'' then they escape those things. 
They don't fix your house, and they don't pay the cost of putting you 
up.
  Again, the law calls on them to call for the proper adjustment of a 
claim, but what had happened in the case of Katrina and what I fear 
could happen to you if you live in coastal America is that the policy 
is that the companies do what they did in South Mississippi, which is, 
within days of the storm, they send their adjusters notices that say, 
when you see wind and water both occur, blame it all on the water.
  What that means is, as I've told you, that there were 4 hours of 
hurricane-force winds at homes like the Benvenutis' and the Haddens' 
and at others. They had substantial damage because of the wind, but the 
insurance company took the policy that if there was one 2-by-4 left 
standing after 4 hours of hurricane-force winds and then a wave came 
along and knocked down that last 2-by-4 that they had escaped all 
liability for what the wind did and that the taxpayer would pay all of 
the cost of getting this fixed, that they would escape all liability of 
rebuilding that home, all liability of putting that family up until 
their house could be repaired. The taxpayer was going to foot the bill. 
Well, flood insurance doesn't cover cost of living expenses. So, right 
off the bat, that cost was borne by the taxpayer.
  How do they get away with this?
  Well, buried in a typical 25-page contract, that was the norm for 
State Farm Insurance Company. On Page 10 of a 25-page contract, buried 
in there despite a contract with America that calls for a fair 
adjustment of the claim, they told folks we do not insure any coverage 
for any loss which would not have occurred in the absence of one or 
more of the following excluded events:
  We do not insure for such loss regardless of: A, cause of excluded 
event, B, other causes of the law, C, whether other causes acted 
concurrently or in any sequence with the excluded event to produce the 
loss or, D, whether the event occurs suddenly or gradually, involves 
isolated or widespread damage, arises from natural or external forces 
or occurs as a result of any combination of these.
  If you are confused, don't feel alone. A Federal judge, Judge Lou 
Guirola in South Mississippi, ended up suing his insurance company 
because they told him he couldn't read his policy. The former president 
of the United States Senate, Trent Lott, also an attorney, was told 
``We're sorry, Senator. You can't read your policy,'' which leads to 
the question:
  If a U.S. Senator and a Federal judge can't read their policies, what 
chance do you have? What chance does a high school football coach, a 
corrugated box salesman or a housewife have if those guys are told 
``you can't read your policy''?
  That goes back to the conflict between the law that says you can do a 
fair adjustment of the claim and a company that says, if both things 
happen, we're not going to pay.
  I'm quoting from the National Flood Insurance Program regulations, 
section 44 CFR. ``The primary relationship between the `write your own 
company'' that's your insurer--``and the Federal Government will be of 
a fiduciary nature; i.e., to ensure that any taxpayer funds are 
accounted for and are appropriately expended.
  ``The entire responsibility for providing a proper adjustment for 
both combined wind and water claims and flood-alone claims is the 
responsibility of the `write your own.' ''
  In effect, our Nation said we're trusting you, State Farm. We're 
trusting you, Nationwide. We're trusting you, Allstate, to do a fair 
adjustment. If the water did it, Nation pays. If the wind did it, you 
pay.
  So how did the insurance industry respond to being given this huge 
leeway?
  Within days of the storm, within about 13 days to be exact, State 
Farm was writing their adjusters and was saying, where wind acts 
concurrently with flooding to cause damage to insured property, 
coverage for the loss exists only under flood coverage. What does that 
translate to? The homeowner gets screwed out of his policy, and you, 
the taxpayers, get stuck with the bill.
  This is an internal e-mail from an engineering firm, one of the ones 
that was hired by State Farm to go out and adjust these claims. It had 
been fired by State Farm for actually doing what the law said to do, 
which was to say this much wind damage, this much water damage, but now 
they have reached an agreement with State Farm, saying, ``Okay. We'll 
go back and revise those things.'' Meaning, we'll scratch out all 
efforts to say that the wind did it, because we're going to now say the 
water did it, and the taxpayer pays. So this is from Randy Down to Bob 
Kochan. This is an internal memo that we've been given access to:
  ``I have serious concerns about the ethics of this whole matter. I 
really question the ethics of someone who wants to fire us simply 
because our conclusions don't match his or hers. In my opinion, we need 
to find a more rational and ethical client other than State Farm to be 
dealing with. They have already contradicted themselves regarding the 
reports, wanting percentages stated, and his counterpart calling a few 
days later and telling us to resubmit two reports that had shown 
percentages and saying that SF,'' State Farm, ``absolutely does not 
want them shown because they would then have to settle for the portion 
that was reportedly caused by wind.''
  In the House of Representatives, we have passed language to try to 
correct this. The people who have objected to this have been, by and 
large, from the insurance industry. The insurance industry, in their 
claims, will tell you that they had settled 95 percent of the Katrina 
claims within the first year. What they will not tell you is that there 
were hundreds of thousands of wind-only claims in Louisiana, 
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia where there was 
no flooding. So in any place they couldn't

[[Page H6164]]

blame flooding, in any place they could not put the bill on the 
government, they had no choice but to pay.
  So, yes, they did pay thousands of claims. Disputes over wind and 
flood damage were confirmed to the portions of the coastal counties and 
parishes that experienced both flooding and the most severe wind 
damage.
  Bob Hardwick of the Insurance Information Institute testified in 
Congress: ``A claim was completely excluded, for example, because it 
was not covered under the policy to begin with, which wouldn't be in 
these statistics to begin with. We consider a claim when there is some 
damage that is compensable under the insurance policy. In other words, 
these statistics don't consider all of the claims filed, only those 
that the insurer decided to pay.''
  To put it simply, the claims of the three folks that I showed you 
when I first walked in would have been considered by the insurance 
company to have been settled because they were told ``no.'' Maybe in 
State Farm's mind that case was closed. It certainly was not in the 
case of those three families, and it was not just three families. I 
could bring thousands of similar photos before you with thousands of 
similar sad stories.
  So those families were screwed out of their policies, but the point I 
want to make to you, to the taxpayers of America, is that you got stuck 
with bills. The Nation got stuck with bills that the insurance 
companies should have paid.
  I think there was fraud. The insurance companies tell you there was 
no fraud, but the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, finds ``an 
inherent conflict of interest exists when the same insurance company is 
responsible for determining the extent of the flood damage that the 
National Flood Insurance must pay and the extent of the wind damage 
that is the responsibility of the company, itself. FEMA, a parent 
organization of National Flood Insurance, cannot determine the accuracy 
of flood insurance payments because it does not require companies to 
explain how they divided wind and flood.

                              {time}  2015

  ``Property owners with separate wind and flood policies cannot buy 
insurance and know in advance what hurricane damage will have been 
covered.''
  The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security went on 
to say because FEMA oversight on wind-water claims is minimal, the 
inspector general subpoenaed records from 15 insurance companies to 
investigate their proceedings. Adjusters working for the insurance 
companies, or for the companies, have a conflict of interest when 
handling flood claims.
  Concurrent causation. Remember, that's what we talk about, page 10 of 
a 25-page document. Language in the insurance policies creates the 
potential to bill flood insurance for damage that is caused by both 
wind and flooding.
  Let me make it perfectly simple. You are a claims adjuster, you're 25 
years old, you have a mortgage. You have kids in school, Christmas is 
coming up, and you have the opportunity to walk on that property and do 
a fair adjustment which says my company has to pay some, the Nation has 
to pay some, or you have the opportunity, in fact you have been 
instructed by your boss to say when there is wind and water, stick it 
to the government.
  What do you think they did? And as we saw from that internal company 
memo, the ones who did it right were threatened with being fired.
  Not only does the insurer not pay for the house to be rebuilt, they 
don't pay the living expenses for the property owner who would be 
entitled to them if the claim was approved.
  So who pays? You pay. In the case of south Mississippi, let me start 
by saying we are eternally grateful to the American people for the 
kindness and generosity that they have shown us because at one point 
there were 42,000 families just in south Mississippi living off the 
generosity of the people of America. They were living in what has now 
been called a FEMA trailer, a 28-foot travel trailer that our Nation 
was generous enough to buy and put on their property, hook up to water 
and sewer, but not without a cost. In fact, the cost of those 42,000 
trailers turns out to be, that we paid on the average $15,000 per 
trailer to buy them, and $16,000, which I know is an outrageous cost, 
to put them on that property. That was a no-bid deal to one of the 
President's buddy's, Bechtel, Incorporated.
  But the fact of the matter is it did happen and it will happen again 
next time. And the combined cost of this for those 42,000 families, our 
Nation, you and I, pitched in $31,000. The cost of that just in 
Mississippi alone was $1.3 billion that the Nation paid that in most 
instances an insurance company should have paid. But because they said 
there was no wind damage, we are not paying on your homeowner's policy, 
so somebody got stuck with the bill. Our Nation did.
  You would like to think that maybe they did that because funds were 
tight or maybe it threatened the survivability of those companies. That 
certainly wasn't the case. In 2005, even after paying the Hurricane 
Katrina claims that they did, the insurance industry made $48.8 billion 
in profits.
  In 2006, we were fortunate to have fewer hurricanes, they made $67 
billion in profits.
  Last year, $65 billion in profit.
  We have before us a situation where it is the perfect storm of 
everything that can go wrong for the consumer.
  Number one, you would think why isn't Congress doing something about 
this. For starters, you can open the Federal Code from the first page 
to the last code and you won't find one word of regulation of the 
insurance industry. It gets worse. The insurance industry, the same 
folks that are supposed to be our good neighbor, we're supposed to be 
in their good hands, they're supposed to be on our side, it turns out 
that they are exempt from the antitrust laws that regulate every other 
business in America. It is perfectly legal for State Farm to call 
Allstate to call Nationwide and say, You know what, let's raise 
everybody's rates. So be it your health insurance, your automobile 
insurance, or your homeowner's insurance.
  It is also legal for them, as I am pretty well convinced they did 
after the storm, to call each other up and say: You know what, if you 
don't pay claims, State Farm, and I don't pay claims, Allstate, and 
Nationwide doesn't pay claims, there won't be anybody saying they are 
getting screwed, because they're all getting screwed; but it's just the 
way it is.
  If any other business in America did that, they would go to jail. But 
the insurance industry is exempt from the antitrust laws. Congress has 
not addressed that, but I want you to be aware of it. They were given 
this exemption based on a Supreme Court ruling in 1944 that says, wait 
a second, you're doing interstate commerce, you have to be regulated by 
interstate commerce. Instead, Congress came back in 1945 and passed 
something called the McCarran-Ferguson Act which in effect is granting 
an immunity from the antitrust laws to the insurance industry. I had 
hoped we would address that. We didn't. But Congress did do something.
  First, I would like to tell you I'm sure some of you are thinking, 
that is just a Mississippi problem. Why are you boring us? I will tell 
you it is definitely a Mississippi problem. State Farm won't sell 
property insurance policies in Mississippi. Farm Bureau will not renew 
wind coverage. Allstate, no new wind coverage sold in south 
Mississippi. Nationwide, no wind coverage sold in south Mississippi. 
But it is not just our problem, it is America's problem.
  Massachusetts is a long way from south Mississippi. Since 2003, ten 
insurance companies have dropped homeowner coverage in Cape Cod, 
affecting 44,000 homeowners.
  In New York, Allstate stopped writing new homeowners' policies for 
single-family homes in New York City, Long Island, and Winchester 
County. Allstate held 26 percent of the market share for homeowners in 
these counties in 2006.
  In Maryland, the second largest homeowner insurance in the State, 
Allstate, Allstate will stop writing new policies in many coastal 
areas.
  North Carolina, the North Carolina State Insurance Plan, the beach 
plan, saw liability increase by over 260 percent, so that is a State-
run system picking up for the fact that the private sector has pulled 
out.
  In Virginia in 2006, State Farm stopped writing insurance business. 
Travelers Insurance stopped selling and

[[Page H6165]]

renewing residential insurance in Virginia Beach.
  South Carolina insurance companies have dropped the last 16,000 
homeowners' policies since 2006.
  In Florida, State Farm has announced it will stop writing residential 
renters and commercial properties on March 1, 2008.
  Texas, Allstate won't write new homeowners' policies in 14 coastal 
counties.
  Louisiana, the State insurance plan that jumped in to take the place 
of the private sector is now the third largest homeowner's insurance.
  In Alabama, State Farm won't write policies to cover the beach towns.
  The point is that although the coastal counties of America constitute 
only 17 percent of the total land mass, it represents 53 percent of all 
Americans. That is why this is a problem that affects every one of us, 
at least half of us. Every one of us who lives in a coastal State, half 
of all Americans.
  Unless we change the law, Congress will allow this system to continue 
and taxpayers to continue to foot the bill when the next hurricane 
strikes.
  So what's the solution? The solution is what the House of 
Representatives has already passed that the Senate has not passed that 
we will go to conference in the next month on, and that I would hope as 
a result of this that the American people would encourage their 
Senators to help us find a risk-based, actuarially sound national pool 
to allow property owners to purchase coverage for both wind and water, 
a revocation of the insurance industry's antitrust exemption that 
allows them to fix prices.
  The multi-peril bill that passed this House with the help of Speaker 
Pelosi and Chairman Frank, Chairwoman Waters, and a lot of other folks, 
including a number of my Republican colleagues, would allow property 
owners to buy both wind and flood coverage through the National Flood 
Insurance Program.
  It would increase the coverage, and I am one of the many people who 
lost my home that night, and I for one was shocked at the incredible 
cost of replacing my house. And, quite frankly, the $250,000 that the 
National Flood Insurance covers, I would have told you 5 years ago was 
a lot of money. Based on my experience of building a 1,400 square foot 
house, I realize now it really doesn't cover enough. So we have 
increased the coverage up to $500,000 per structure, $150,000 for 
contents. For non-residential, it's a million for the structure and 
$750,000 for contents.

  Property owners would be able to buy insurance and know in advance 
that hurricane damage will be covered without disputes. That you don't 
have to hire an engineer to say whether the wind did it or the water 
did it, you don't have to hire a lawyer, and you don't have to wait 2 
years to get justice. If you leave your home, if you evacuate the way 
your Nation told you to get out of there, and you come home to a 
substantially damaged home, or if you come home to nothing, which is 
what thousands of my friends and neighbors did, you know that if you 
paid your policy, if you built your house the way you should have, that 
you are going to get paid.
  The premiums for this new coverage would be risk-based and 
actuarially sound. Under the new rules of the House, under the 
Democratic majority, we can't start any new program that doesn't pay 
for itself. That's the way it should be. So the premiums would be more 
than enough to cover the liabilities and so there would be, unlike the 
present situation where $1.3 billion went to pay for FEMA trailers by 
folks who got screwed by the insurance companies, where billions of 
dollars went for homeowners' grants in Louisiana and Mississippi to pay 
people who didn't get paid by the insurance companies, in these 
instances those people who had the policy who paid the premiums who 
built the houses the way they should, they're going to be covered and 
you, the taxpayer, will not have to subsidize this by one dime.
  Wind storm insurance would be available where the local governments 
adopt and enforce the international building code or equivalent.
  The Federal multi-peril program will spread the risk geographically. 
If you think about it, Mississippi has a fairly small coastline so it 
is fairly safe to say that if a storm hits, the entire coastline is 
going to get hit. That is not spreading the risk. On the other hand, if 
53 percent of all Americans live on the coast, the chance that every 
coastal community is going to get hit by a storm that year is 
minuscule. In fact, it would probably be called Armageddon, and we hope 
that doesn't happen.
  Taxpayers would benefit where more damages are covered by the 
insurance industry instead of the inefficient governmental disaster 
assistance programs. Insurance companies could return to coastal 
communities to sell fire, theft, and liability coverage and excess 
coverage above the $500,000 that this policy would cover.
  A multi-peril bill was introduced in the House in February. It had 33 
cosponsors, 27 Democrats, 6 Republicans. Ms. Waters, the chairman of 
the subcommittee, included the text in the National Flood Insurance 
Program. It passed this House by a vote of 263-146. It did not get a 
lot of help in the United States Senate. It will go to conference this 
summer.
  If you live in coastal America, I would give you a couple of words of 
advice.
  Number one, if you have a homeowner's policy, break it out. See if it 
has the words ``concurrent causation'' in that policy because if it 
does, that becomes the same excuse that the insurance companies used to 
screw thousands of south Mississippians out of their money. Demand a 
clarification from your insurance agent as to what that means for you. 
Does that mean you are going to find an excuse not to pay me? Or does 
that mean that you're going to come through like a good neighbor, like 
I'm going to be in your good hands, like you're supposed to be on my 
side.
  The second thing I would ask you to do, if you belong to the home 
builders or the realtors or the bankers, encourage those organizations 
to back this program because, again, for 53 percent of all Americans, 
they are in peril at the thought of not being able to cover their home 
for wind damage.
  But I will take this a step further. It has come to my attention 
recently that there has been as much tornado damage around the country 
for the past 20 years as hurricane damage. Tornadoes happen to be very 
fierce in a smaller area, but the cumulative effect of all those 
tornadoes has caused as much damage dollar-wise as the hurricanes have.
  In fairness, we ought to cover that, too. In fairness, those people 
who are waking up in Indiana and Ohio and Iowa from the devastation of 
those floods and from the devastation of those tornadoes, they need to 
know that they are protected, too.
  I would hope that as this bill goes to conference that our Nation 
would step forward and assume the responsibility and provide every 
American the opportunity to purchase multi-peril insurance. Hopefully 
we can start out with hurricanes because we know the present system 
isn't working there. But I think every American ought to know that if 
they build their house right and pay their premiums and something 
terrible happens to them, that their Nation is going to be there for 
them. And yes, they have paid into a fund that will help cover that 
cost when it happens.
  We will have that opportunity next month, and I would hope that every 
American, no matter where you live in America, would see the value of 
this and would ask their Senators to agree to this, and that we can do 
something that's good, not just good for my State, not just good for 
Alabama and Louisiana, not just good for Maine and Massachusetts and 
North Carolina, but good for every American.
  The insurance industry let us down. The insurance industry makes huge 
money. The insurance industry is exempt from the antitrust laws. The 
insurance industry has the most favorable tax treatment of any industry 
in America; and the truth of the matter is, instead of having all of 
those benefits and turning around when the people were down and saying 
yes, we are going to help you, they screwed the people of south 
Mississippi.

                              {time}  2030

  What I don't want is them to do that to you.
  This is not going to be an easy fight. This is truly a case of the 
citizens against the lobbyists. In 2004, the insurance industry donated 
$36 million in

[[Page H6166]]

political contributions. In 2006, $31 million. Most of that money went 
to Republicans, but in fairness, now that the Democrats are in the 
majority, they're probably writing checks to Democrats, too.
  They're doing this because they want to hang on to their greedy 
practices. They want to hang on to their anti-trust exemption. They 
want to hang on to the fact that they can collude. They want to hang on 
to the fact that they can turn around and have the lowest taxes in 
America and that they have zero Federal regulation, that there is 
nothing that the Federal law can do to stop them from these practices.
  But you know what? We have right on our side. We have the best 
interest of the homeowner, whether he's in Kansas, Massachusetts, 
Mississippi, California, when we think that there's better ways to 
offer an all-fairness insurance, backed by our Nation, that's going to 
be there when we need it.
  So Madam Speaker, with that in mind, I'm going to yield back the 
remainder of my time. And for the very, very patient staff of the House 
of Representatives, I kept you here as late as I did, but I appreciate 
this opportunity to speak to the people.

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