[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 8873]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR ON THE PART OF INSURANCE COMPANIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, as the Representative of the 
people of south Mississippi, I want to rise once again to thank my 
fellow citizens, both collectively and individually, for what they have 
done for the people of south Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane 
Katrina. We have been the beneficiaries of tremendous generosity, and I 
don't want at any time for people to think that what they have done as 
individuals, through groups, through churches, through charities, and 
as taxpayers that we are in any way ungrateful for that.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the continuing problems that persists in south 
Mississippi is the whole debate over insurance. When people lost their 
homes, when on the day after the storm there was nothing there and they 
tried to settle with their insurance company, in almost every instance 
the insurance companies refused to pay on homeowners' policies, citing 
those homes had been destroyed by water and not wind. And, of course, 
when your house isn't there, you don't have much of an arguing 
position.
  That has affected the lives of tens of thousands of south 
Mississippians, and they suffer individually as a result of that. But, 
Mr. Speaker, what I am asking my colleagues to look into, and I will 
offer an amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program when it 
comes before this body next week or the following week, is to ask for 
the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to look 
into whether or not a crime has been committed against the citizens of 
this country collectively.
  Because when the Allstates, the Nationwides, the Farm Bureaus, the 
State Farms of the world refused to pay the claim on a homeowner's 
policy and shifted that cost to the National Flood Insurance Program, I 
suspect that they took costs that they should have paid out of their 
pockets and their stockholders' pockets and shifted those costs 
unfairly and, in my opinion, criminally to the taxpayer.
  When an adjustment agent walked to any of the 10,000 slabs and said 
there is nothing there, your house was washed away, and there was no 
wind damage, that was completely contrary to what the Navy 
Meteorological Command tells us, that in communities like Bay St. Louis 
and Waveland there was 6 to 8 hours of 120-to-180-mile-an-hour winds 
before the water ever arrived. Even farther away from the eye, in towns 
like Biloxi and Ocean Springs, there were at least, according to the 
United States Navy, at least 3 hours of maximum wind before the high 
water arrived.
  So when these agents looked the people in south Mississippi in the 
eye and denied their claims, they not only hurt them but they are 
hurting us all. Because, again, when that cost is shifted to the 
National Flood Insurance Program, billions of taxpayer dollars had to 
be shifted from other accounts and, more honestly, borrowed to help 
make up the difference. So it is not fair to them, and it is not fair 
to the American taxpayer.
  I think, at the very least, this Congress ought to ask the Inspector 
General's office to look into it. I am going to offer that amendment, 
and at this time I am asking for my colleagues' help on that. We will 
be going before the Rules Committee next week. I do want to thank 
Chairman Oxley for his generosity in hearing me out on this. He has 
offered a Government Accountability Office investigation. But in total 
honesty, that is already going on.
  I think that when you believe a crime has been committed, then I 
think it calls for a criminal investigation. And everything I see in 
south Mississippi tells me a crime has been perpetrated on the people 
of south Mississippi and the taxpayers of this Nation, and I am asking 
my colleagues to look into what I think is a crime.

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