Flood insurance approval for $9.7 billion in claims from U.S. Congress

Flood Insurance

Flood Insurance The final congressional nod was achieved when the Senate passed the bill on Friday.

The new United States Senate has now passed a bill for $9.7 billion which has brought about the final approval of Congress to assist in the payment of flood insurance claims for businesses, homeowners, and renters whose properties were damaged by Superstorm Sandy when it hit at the end of October 2012.

This has replenished the funds for NFIP, which were reaching urgently low levels.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was predicted to run dry on cash at some point this week, leaving approximately 115,000 unresolved claims from Sandy, in addition to another 5,000 claims from flooding that were unrelated to that storm. The massive post tropical storm ripped its way along the northeast coast of the united states. It generated the worst flooding that New York City and its surrounding area, the Connecticut coastline, and Atlantic City, New Jersey had ever seen.

The flood insurance claims from that storm alone rapidly depleted the funds in the federal program.

Further voting is expected to take place later this month for an aid package worth $51 billion. Emergency responses costs from the government have already come with a price tag of $2 billion in order to help to deal with Sandy’s devastation.

This most recent vote occurred over two months after the impact of the storm killed 120 people and left thousands of others homeless. Lawmakers and other officials in the areas affected by the storm were enraged at the beginning of last week, when John Boehner, House Speaker, chose to delay the vote.

Within the House of Representatives, the flood insurance bill was approved with a vote of 354-67. The “no” votes were cast by Republicans, greatly due to the further government spending that it would cause, without additional cuts to spending elsewhere in order to offset it. This aid proposal, as has been the case in previous natural disasters, did not provide offsetting spending cuts.

Lawmakers within the northeast have explained that the flood insurance funds are critically needed in order to assist the victims of one of the worst disasters that the country has experienced since 2005, when it was hit by Hurricane Katrina.

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