[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7858-S7861]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I am going to be shortly joined by my 
distinguished colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, for an 
exchange we will have, but in order to preserve the time on the floor, 
I will start.
  I come to the floor today to once again join the Senator from Rhode 
Island in calling attention to the crisis that is climate change. I 
want to thank my friend Senator Whitehouse for his passion, his 
persistence, and his refusal to let the Senate be silent in the face of 
one of the greatest threats to ever confront our Nation and the world.
  Some say we can't afford to invest in clean, renewable, American-made 
energy. I say we cannot afford not to. The fact is, every year that 
goes by without a comprehensive strategy to reduce the

[[Page S7859]]

carbon pollution responsible for warming our planet is another year in 
which the Federal Government of the United States fails to protect 
future generations from the immense environmental, economic, and human 
costs inflicted by climate change.
  I yearn for the day that this body summons the courage to stand up to 
the special interests and boldly confront this challenge, for the 
longer we wait, the more expensive and the less effective we will be. 
And if you don't believe me, just look at our National Flood Insurance 
Program, which is already in dire need of comprehensive, forward-
thinking reform.
  I have spent the better part of the past 2 years bringing Democrats 
and Republicans together in support of such a plan. Yet the majority 
has stubbornly refused to debate our legislation, forcing us to pass 
short-term reauthorizations that preserve a broken status quo. Like the 
totality of the climate threat, when it comes to flood insurance, every 
time we kick the can down the road, the can only gets heavier.
  For our coastal and inlet communities, climate change isn't some far-
out problem; it is here. We are already feeling the effects and bearing 
the costs in the form of rising sea levels and increasingly powerful 
storms. Even if the President of the United States suddenly reversed 
course and put America on a path to slow our changing climate, we would 
still need to address how we manage a heightened risk for flooding. 
From fishing, to tourism, to trade and so much more, the fact is, 
America's coastal communities are vital to our long-term economic 
competitiveness, and to give up on them in the face of rising sea 
levels would be to give up on our country.
  According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, sea level rise will 
put an estimated 325,000 homes and businesses, worth more than $135 
billion, at risk of chronic flooding in the next 30 years. With 
increased risks for flooding comes a whole host of challenges. Falling 
property values will further strain local budgets, leading to 
downgraded government credit ratings. As communities lose out on 
approximately $1.5 billion in property taxes per year, hard-working 
taxpayers will feel the pain. It will cut away at middle-class 
families' most valuable asset, the foundation of their financial nest 
egg, which is their home.
  According to a paper published by the University of Pennsylvania 
Libraries, ``As sea level rise manifests along the coasts--reducing 
property value--impacts on revenue will present new challenges in 
servicing debt . . . and present a greater probability of default by 
local government.''
  We cannot simply keep spending money to preserve the status quo. We 
need a system for managing flood risk that pushes our country toward 
resiliency and treats our people and the communities they live in 
fairly. But, unfortunately, we have remained at an impasse for over a 
year now, unable to fix a program that we all know is badly broken.
  We in New Jersey witnessed firsthand the pervasive problems plaguing 
the National Flood Insurance Program--or what we call NFIP--after 
Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012. It was bad enough that so many New 
Jerseyans had to grapple with the heartbreaking loss of their homes in 
the wrath of Sandy, so it made my blood boil to see the suffering 
compounded by a badly broken flood insurance program. We found 
ourselves lost in a system that put the policyholder last and that 
looked for every reason to deny legitimate claims and made up some when 
they didn't exist. We had homeowners who found the foundations of their 
homes had washed away into the ocean, only to have their claim denied 
because their insurance company claimed it wasn't floodwaters but 
moving soil that caused the damage. The insurance adjuster didn't stop 
to consider that maybe it was the 5-foot storm surge that moved the 
soil in the first place.
  This is a photograph of Doug Quinn, who served honorably in the U.S. 
Marines. He is a constituent whom I have gotten to know very well and 
who got snagged by this very loophole. As you can see from this 
picture, the storm surge from Sandy inundated his home, and it ripped 
apart his foundation, leaving a large hole in his living room. But 
despite paying his flood insurance premiums for years and despite 
serving our Nation honorably as a U.S. marine, Doug's claim was denied. 
Supposedly it was Earth movement, but the Earth never moved until the 
5-foot storm surge came along.
  We saw mitigation programs that were so cumbersome and delayed that 
many homeowners simply gave up. We had new flood maps come online that 
were 80 percent inaccurate in some counties. We had FEMA using taxpayer 
dollars to drag homeowners through expensive litigation until they gave 
up on their flood claims.
  The struggles of everyday New Jerseyans revealed to me the dramatic 
shortcomings in our Flood Insurance Program and left me determined to 
fix them, so I began working on flood insurance reform that took the 
lessons we learned after Sandy and turned them into action.
  In the summer of 2017, I introduced the Sustainable, Affordable, 
Fair, and Efficient--or SAFE--NFIP Act, which is a comprehensive flood 
insurance reform bill cosponsored by four Democrats and 
three Republicans here in the Senate. I know this town already has too 
many acronyms, but this one clearly spells out the first major goals we 
have in this bill. We want the NFIP--the National Flood Insurance 
Program--to be sustainable, we want it to be affordable, we want it to 
be fair, we and want it to be efficient.

  Let's start with sustainability. We have to put the NFIP on the path 
to solvency.
  Since Katrina in 2005, the NFIP has been in the red, borrowing from 
the Treasury Department to pay claims. Some say that we should just 
jack up the premiums on homeowners and keep charging more to get at 
this imbalance; that if we ask homeowners to pay more and more and 
more, eventually the NFIP will have enough money to pay all of the 
claims without borrowing. But higher premiums alone are not the answer. 
Of course we want everybody to pay their fair share, but the undeniable 
reality is that the more we raise the premiums, the more homeowners 
leave the National Flood Insurance Program altogether, and that 
guarantees the program's failure.
  Instead of looking simply to raise prices, I want to focus on 
reducing costs. I believe the best way out of this hole is to make 
proactive investments in resiliency and mitigation to reduce the damage 
in the first place. In other words, we must build coastal communities 
that are resilient and strong, so the damage inflicted by the storms of 
the future is less expensive to recover. That is why the SAFE NFIP Act 
includes $1 billion-per-year in mitigation funding and more than 
triples the maximum increased cost of compliance--or the ICC--grant 
from $30,000 to $100,000.
  We also require that this funding be spent more wisely, allowing 
homeowners to use ICC grants before their house is destroyed. I have 
never understood why we require homeowners to sit in harm's way and 
wait for the next storm to come before we help them reduce their flood 
risk. It makes no sense. Our bill would fix that. By giving Americans 
the tools to reduce their risks, we can save the NFIP and the taxpayer 
billions of dollars.
  Our legislation also goes after wasteful private insurance company 
fees, which consume about 30 cents of every premium dollar, despite 
taking on none of the risk. That is good business if you can get it. 
Don't get me wrong--that is good business if you can get it, and I have 
no problem with private companies making a profit, but every dollar 
they make comes from the pockets of policyholders.
  The NFIP also currently pays about $400 million in interest every 
year. That is 10 percent of its annual premiums--money that could be 
going toward flood prevention and mitigation. That is why our bill 
freezes interest payments on the NFIP debt and redirects that funding 
toward mitigation. Rather than paying interest to ourselves and forcing 
the NFIP to borrow even more, let's use that money to reduce future 
damages, save taxpayer dollars, and build safe communities.
  We cannot have a solvent and sustainable flood insurance program if 
it isn't affordable to the people who depend on it. The NFIP's debt and 
major hurricanes have put upward pressure on premiums, making it more 
and more expensive to get coverage. So it is no surprise that a lot of 
people have been forced to drop their flood insurance.

[[Page S7860]]

  Indeed, in the face of rising premiums, the NFIP has lost more than 
650,000 policies--or over 10 percent of its total business--just since 
2009. Has the risk of flooding decreased since 2009? Absolutely not. 
Are there fewer homes in floodplains now? No, of course not. By way of 
example, when you consider the floods that struck Louisiana and Texas 
and New Jersey in recent years, the answer is an unequivocal no. What 
is happening is that the premiums have just gotten too expensive for 
middle-class families to afford. At the end of the day, this also hurts 
the solvency of the NFIP because, just like every other insurance 
model, a small pool means a more risky, more expensive pool.
  Our bill creates a first-of-its-kind, means-tested affordability 
program that helps middle-class and working families afford flood 
insurance. Pricing families out of coverage and leaving them without a 
way to protect their homes does nothing to address the underlying risk. 
On the contrary, it will be taxpayers who ultimately assume the risk 
when they are asked to fund uninsured disaster assistance.
  It is our responsibility to taxpayers to make the NFIP as fair and as 
efficient as possible. I have no doubt that hundreds, if not thousands, 
of New Jerseyans dropped their flood insurance after Sandy because of 
how they were treated. They faithfully paid their premiums for years, 
often decades, without filing a single claim. Then, when Sandy struck 
and they tried to collect what they were entitled to, they had to 
suffer another disaster. This time it was a manmade one--the storm 
after the storm. After losing everything they had worked for their 
entire lives, they had to fight against an insurance company and a 
daunting Federal bureaucracy. Some appealed, some sued, and some just 
gave up.
  I pledged to them I would never let this happen again. Our 
legislation makes good on that promise by putting the customer--in this 
case, the policyholder--first.
  We close notorious loopholes that allow insurers to deny claims, such 
as the infamous earth-movement exclusion when we know floodwaters 
caused the damage.
  We fix the appeals process, enforcing FEMA's own deadline to respond 
to homeowners and giving people who just went through a disaster more 
time to file their appeal.
  We require engineer studies to be conducted by--imagine this--actual, 
licensed engineers in the State where they are operating.
  We require insurance companies to provide policyholders with all of 
the documents used to process their claims so that homeowners aren't 
left in the dark.
  We end the practice of private insurance companies spending hundreds 
of millions of policyholder premium dollars on private attorneys whose 
main goal is to bill as many hours as possible to ultimately deny the 
policyholder any resource.
  Taken together, these reforms will not only give policyholders a fair 
shake, they will also save the NFIP resources that can be better 
directed to mitigation, to mapping, and to other cost-saving 
investments.
  We have to recognize that the NFIP and its 5 million policyholders 
can't solve all of our Nation's flooding problems on their own. We need 
to invest tens of billions of dollars elevating and buying out flood-
prone properties that get hit year after year, those particularly 
repetitively lost properties. We need to incentivize homeowners who 
ultimately will get out of those flood-prone properties so that they 
are not subject to the consequences of constantly getting flooded and 
we collectively are not subject to the incredible costs that are a 
result of that.
  There simply aren't enough resources in the NFIP to even put a dent 
in this problem. So instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars 
on disaster grants each time a storm strikes, why not spend a fraction 
of that on the front end that will yield real dividends in the future? 
When a disaster strikes, our immediate priority should always be to 
save lives and get survivors back to a sense of normalcy as quickly as 
possible.
  While recovery funding is absolutely vital, it shouldn't be at the 
expense of rebuilding stronger, more resilient communities more capable 
of weathering the next storm.
  We have a problem in Congress of short-termism: living in the present 
and not looking ahead. We are afraid of making tough political 
decisions in the present, even when the future is on the line. We see 
it with flood insurance, and we see it with climate change.
  The American people desperately need Congress to overcome this 
shortsighted short-termism. We must start thinking beyond the storm 
that just hit or even the one that is on the horizon. We must begin 
thinking about the risk over the next several decades because flood 
risk is a climate risk we cannot afford to ignore. We must think about 
what kind of future, what kind of environment, what kind of economy we 
want to leave to our children and our grandchildren.
  It should not matter who controls the House, who controls the Senate, 
or who sits in the White House. The Americans of tomorrow are depending 
on us, the leaders of today, to be bold, unafraid, and willing to think 
big. That is why I hope Republicans and Democrats alike will continue 
to work with me on the issue of flood insurance and flood prevention 
when we return in 2019.
  I thank, as I said at the beginning of my comments, my distinguished 
colleague from Rhode Island who has really been the conscience of the 
Senate on this issue of climate change that affects not only those of 
us now here but future generations of Americans. I have taken one slice 
of that in talking about the National Flood Insurance Program and how 
we can mitigate our way and look to a set of circumstances in which we 
can save enormous consequences for New Jersey families and families 
across our country and save the taxpayers' money. But the ultimate 
savings in this is beyond a new flood insurance program. It is making 
sure that we don't continue to see the climate change that has taken 
place, which creates the storms that my State endured--Superstorm 
Sandy--and other major superstorms across the Nation that put us at 
risk as a people, that put our economies at risk, that really threaten 
the very essence of our existence as we know it.
  I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island leading us 
in this regard.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very grateful to the 
distinguished senior Senator from New Jersey for joining me again this 
week to bring attention to the challenges that climate change and 
rising seas pose for our coastal communities. Our States--New Jersey 
and Rhode Island--shared the unforgettable experience of Superstorm 
Sandy, which roared ashore on higher tides and warmer oceans. We know, 
in New Jersey and Rhode Island, how vulnerable we are.
  As sea levels rise and storms intensify, the National Flood Insurance 
Program should be one of our government's best tools to educate and 
prepare our communities for the changes that carbon pollution is 
driving to our coasts. But the program falls well short of this basic 
goal. Instead of tackling its shortfalls head-on, ahead of the next big 
storm, for instance, we are getting set to punt again on the Flood 
Insurance Program.
  My Ocean State, much smaller than New Jersey, has 400 miles of 
coastline threatened by sea level rise and storm surge flooding, so 
telling homeowners and coastal businesses that we will get to it 
eventually is not good enough. Our coastal risk is growing, not 
shrinking.
  A 2017 Zillow chart shows that over 4,800 homes in Rhode Island--
4,800 families' homes--valued at nearly $3 billion would be under water 
by 2100, using an optimistic assessment of only 6 feet of sea level 
rise. Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council is now 
planning for our State to see up to 9 to 12 feet of sea level rise by 
then. New Jersey, of course, has even more at risk with its bigger 
shoreline, with over $93 billion worth of property predicted to fall to 
rising seas.
  This problem does not wait until the year 2100. It hits earlier. It 
hits as soon as 30-year mortgages and insurance get hard to come by 
because banks and insurers foresee these risks, and that inhibits 
buyers, so prices fall--perhaps prices even crash, as Freddie Mac is 
predicting.

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  Last year, GAO reported that coastal areas face particularly high 
financial risks and that annual coastal property losses from sea level 
rise and increased storms will run into the billions of dollars every 
year in the short run and over $50 billion every year by late century. 
GAO pointed to an EPA estimate of $5 trillion in economic costs to 
coastal property from climate change through 2100. Our coastal States 
can't laugh that off because it makes the oil industry uncomfortable to 
talk about climate change.
  Investors, creditors, appraisers--everybody who works coastal 
markets--is taking notice. Last December, the credit rating agency, 
Moody's, adopted indicators ``to assess the exposure and overall 
susceptibility of U.S. states to the physical effects of climate 
change.'' This is Moody's. Moody's looks particularly at coasts and at 
the share of a State's economic activity generated by its coastal 
communities. It counts the homes built on flood plains, and it counts 
the risk of extreme weather damage as a share of the local economy.
  The managing director at Moody's told the Chicago Tribune that 
Moody's would be taking these risks into consideration when evaluating 
the credit ratings of coastal municipalities and States.
  Property appraisers are also starting to incorporate these risks into 
their work. The Appraisal Institute's Valuation magazine quoted Rhode 
Island appraiser Brad Hevenor's warning that homes that receive a 30-
year mortgage today ``might be completely different types of property 
[by the end of their mortgage] than they are today.'' He points out, as 
Senator Menendez pointed out, that FEMA flood maps are defective, 
backward-looking, and often insufficient at accurately predicting risk 
for communities and homeowners.
  My frustrations with FEMA's flood risk maps are no secret. They are 
notoriously inaccurate, incomplete, and outdated. The Agency's modeling 
is often based on inaccurate data and on methodology from the 1970s. It 
has proven particularly incapable of accurately capturing the different 
wave and dune dynamics that determine real flood risk along coasts 
during major storms.
  The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, a small State 
agency, has had to develop its own models to provide better risk 
information to coastal residents and communities than FEMA provides. 
The contrast between the State's work and FEMA's maps highlights just 
how costly and potentially life-threatening reliance on FEMA's maps can 
be.
  This map is FEMA's map relative to mean sea level for a 100-year 
storm hitting Charlestown, RI. Here is the code as to how much flooding 
to expect. The worst flooding for the homes that surround Ninigret 
Pond, along Rhode Island's southern coast, looks to be around 14 feet 
around this area here.
  This map shows the CRMC's prediction for the same area for the same 
storm. It projects that homes in this same area may see closer to 20 
feet of floodwaters, which means FEMA's map is underestimating flood 
risk by 6 feet.
  It is not just errors in Rhode Island. Rice University and Texas A&M 
found that FEMA flood risk maps captured only about 25 percent of the 
actual damage from storms that hit Houston between 1999 and 2009--25 
percent. According to the Houston Chronicle, more than half of homes 
damaged by Hurricane Harvey were not listed in any flood risk areas, 
meaning they were not required to have flood insurance or meet any 
flood risk mitigation building codes.
  Congress continues to fund these maps on the cheap, leaving Americans 
to bear the risk of antiquated models that don't reflect the changes 
that climate change is bringing to our coasts. Families are forced to 
endure the repeated damage and destruction of their homes, and 
taxpayers are made to pay the cost of over and over and over rebuilding 
the same building in the same place that is already washed away.
  After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Flood Insurance Program hit its 
$30 billion borrowing limit. We maxed out. So in October of 2017, 
Congress had to forgive $16 billion worth of debt to free up money to 
pay off claims for Harvey, Irma, and Maria. The program is currently at 
least $20 billion in debt, and claims from the 2018 hurricane season 
are still being processed. The Congressional Research Service, as of 
September 2018, found that the program had only $9.9 billion of 
remaining borrowing authority.
  It is time to get serious about reforming this broken system and 
reform it for a changing climate and for changing coasts--the things we 
know are coming at us. The current system often leaves homeowners no 
option but to rebuild the same building in the same place on the 
flooded property. CRS estimates that only about 2 percent of current 
NFIP-related properties are considered repetitive loss or severe 
repetitive loss properties--only 2 percent, but that 2 percent accounts 
for 16 percent of claims, $9 billion. Over the life of the NFIP, those 
repetitive loss or severe repetitive loss properties have totaled 
around 30 percent of all claims, about $17 billion.
  Insurance should allow homeowners to walk away from flood-torn 
structures and go find new, safer homes. Currently, only States or 
municipalities can use FEMA to arrange buyouts of flood-prone 
properties. FEMA then provides up to 75 percent of funding for the 
local government to buy the property at fair market value, and then it 
becomes open space. But the buyout process is cumbersome, it is 
bureaucratic, it is not in the hands of the homeowners, and it doesn't 
get much use. How many mayors and city councils want to buy out and 
turn to public use valuable property that is a part of their tax base 
and encourage folks, potentially, to leave?
  The flood program should work with communities to plan for cost-
effective resiliency to flooding, whether it is elevating properties, 
moving homes, or retreating from rising seas. Homeowners should have 
these options. It is willful blindness to ignore this problem as seas 
continue to rise and storms become more unpredictable and ferocious, 
and it is even worse when you compound it with false and erroneous 
mapping so that the warnings to these families are wrong.
  Property owners and communities deserve proper warning about the 
flood risks they face, and they deserve alternatives to simply 
rebuilding the same building in the same place so that it can be 
flooded again and again and again, which the program now forces them to 
do.
  With so much at risk for American families, it is time to wake up and 
put in place a smart and reliable system once and for all.
  I yield the floor, with my gratitude to the distinguished senior 
Senator from New Jersey in joining me here today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

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