This will hold off the ability for the chance to delay increases, an effort put forward by several states.
The most recent efforts that were being made in order to hold off considerable flood insurance rate increases in some areas were spoiled, recently, when the House bill previously submitted by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-Baton Rouge) was withdrawn by the representative, who said that no further action would be taken on the matter before 2014.
This most recent action could make it much more challenging for other efforts that had a similar goal.
The latest efforts to hold back flood insurance premiums have been considerably handicapped by some of these recent moves. Last Wednesday, for instance, Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the top Senate Banking Committee Republican, blocked Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and others who had been seeking a quick vote on a bill that would hold back the increases in rates for another four years.
Cassidy had had been promised a flood insurance vote in the House this week for a bill with a shorter delay.
The bill that Cassidy had put forward would have delayed some of the increases until March 2015, which would be only a six month delay beyond when the majority of the rate hikes are slated to start being implemented under the 2012 Biggert-Waters Act. However, at the end of the week, last week, Cassidy said that there will not be any action on his bill before the holiday break by Congress. This means that the first opportunity that there would be for further movements in this area won’t be until next year.
Lawmakers opposing the bill said that the fact that it didn’t extend far enough could have been its doom, at least for the moment. According to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), who is one of the Bigger-Waters bill co-authors and who has been putting in a considerable effort to repair the “unintended” consequences that have occurred as a result of its implementation, “The fact is that the Cassidy bill does nothing to help those already suffering from skyrocketing flood insurance premiums”. In fact, she believes that it was only going to kick the pins out from under the progress that was making in Congress in a bipartisan way.
