The governor had the opportunity to speak to the White House this week in a meeting with the President.
Governor Rick Scott or Florida has been making a tremendous effort to try to put the spotlight on the issue of the increases in flood insurance rates which have impacted many states, among which his own has been one of those hit the hardest.
He finally received an ideal chance to address this topic with the President, this week, at the White House.
As a result of a law passed in 2012, the flood insurance premiums paid by many residents of Florida experienced a tremendous spike. Several members of Congress are now working to try to reverse that law. That said, Scott, the Republican governor who is running for re-election, has now been focused on placing both the responsibility and the blame on President Obama, for many weeks now.
He and other governors met with Obama this week and flood insurance was a primary topic of discussion.
Following the meeting, Scott said that “We’ve been asking the president to use his pen and stop these unreasonable, unfair increases.” He also said that Obama’s response was that Congress would pass a bill that would bring the issue back again. In Scott’s opinion, “There’s a lot of talk in Washington, there’s not enough action.” He expressed frustration with the fact that while there has been a great deal of discussion on this insurance program, there has yet to be anything passed.
That said, at the same time that Scott is trying to pressure the president to use executive action, Republicans as a whole have been criticizing him for having acted alone in other areas.
The legislation in question, the 2012 Biggert-Waters Act, had been created in order to help to phase out the rate subsidies so that the premiums being paid would come closer to reflecting the actual flooding risk faced by the properties being covered. It was implemented on October 1 of last year and started to remove more subsidies of over five years for the owners of homes that had been constructed before the flood zone mapping program had started. Buyers of homes that were sold after July 2012 experienced an immediate loss of the flood insurance subsidy.