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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, as we know, our colleagues in the House of Representatives are, at the moment, trying to pass a continuing resolution to keep government open. As we also know, our government is supposed to shut down if the House and the Senate don't act tonight, I think, at midnight.
Part of the efforts of our colleagues in the House would be, of course, not only to keep government open but to extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which is also scheduled to expire, I think, tonight at midnight.
The National Flood Insurance Program, as I think most people know, is hardly perfect, but it is important. It is almost impossible to buy flood insurance in the private sector. Many people, unfortunately, when they buy homeowner's insurance, think their homeowner's insurance covers them for flood. It does not.
Many Americans, unfortunately, found that out, for example, with the horrible flooding in Appalachia. Virtually all of our friends and neighbors in the Appalachia area and in South Carolina and Kentucky and in Florida who were victims of Hurricane Helene did not have flood insurance. I think many of them had homeowner's, but they were not covered for flood.
The private sector--I don't want to overstate this--but for the most part, it is almost impossible to get flood insurance in the private sector. That is why we have a National Flood Insurance Program. The National Flood Insurance Program is not exactly a model of efficiency. Under President Biden, it has been screwed up even more. FEMA, which is in charge of our Flood Insurance Program, implemented something called Risk Rating 2.0. It has been a disaster. It is a mess. It looks like something that my beagle used to hide under my back porch. But it is better than nothing. It is better than nothing.
We are going to have a new chair of our Banking Committee in the Senate, as you know, Madam President, Senator Tim Scott. Senator Scott has asked Senator Mike Rounds and I to work on trying to start over with our National Flood Insurance Program, maybe even extend to some other hazards. But Tim has asked Mike and I to try to design a brandnew program that looks like somebody designed it on purpose. And we are going to get started on that. Indeed, we have already started.
But in the meantime, the current program, as bad as it is, expires tonight at midnight, and we want to continue it. What would be the result of that? It would mean that as of 12:01 tonight, the Flood Insurance Program can no longer write new policies.
I don't want to scare people. If you already have flood insurance through what we call the NFIP, which is just an acronym for the national program, your policy won't expire. If it is not at its termination date, you will continue to have coverage. But you can't buy a new policy. That will have a huge impact on the real estate market in America. Many institutions will not loan money to a new homeowner or a homeowner who is trying to buy a home if they can't get flood insurance because the mortgage companies just don't want to take that risk.
We have already seen, for a variety of reasons, the extraordinary increase in the price of a home in America. I was reading the other day that 10, 15, 20 years ago, the average age of a first-time home buyer in America was 28. Today, it is 38. Why are people having to wait so much longer to buy a home? It is not because they don't want to buy a home. It is because they need time to save up the money for a home.
But my point is that the price of homes, for a variety of reasons--in part because of inflation--the price of a home has just risen dramatically. I don't think any of us want to do anything to make the price of a home go up even further.
I want to say a word about Louisiana. We have about 5 million people who have flood insurance in our Flood Insurance Program. About 10 percent of those are in Louisiana. Those who have flood insurance in Louisiana are, for the most part--I am trying to think of a stronger way of saying it--the vast majority of the people in Louisiana who have flood insurance are working men and working women. Our coast, for example, is a working coast. Some people like to paint the picture of the National Flood Insurance Program serving multimillionaires with multimillion-dollar homes on the coast. That is not Louisiana, I can assure you.
My people are working people. We don't even have a coast like some States that have those type of homes. If you travel to Grand Isle or Port Fourchon in my State, you would see that. These are middle-class Americans that depend on the National Flood Insurance Program.
I worked very hard--many of us have--to try to improve the National Flood Insurance Program through the years. I have been working on it since the first day I came to the U.S. Senate. Frankly, I didn't get a lot of cooperation from leadership of the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over the National Flood Insurance Program.
I don't want to make a promise I can't keep, but our Banking Committee is going to be under new leadership, as I just said. And Senator Scott, the new chairman, has directed Senator Rounds and I to try to come up with a program that is a vast improvement over what we have.
I sum up by saying, what I am going to propose to do here in a moment is to extend the status quo until September 30. It will extend the National Flood Insurance Program that we have right now, imperfect as it may be, ugly as it may be. And it is. It really does look like something my beagle used to hide under the back porch. The American people deserve better, but it is better than nothing. Without it, it will have a huge impact on the real estate market.
So my bill would extend the program--no changes--until September 30, 2025. Hopefully, by then we will have a new bill to present to you, Madam President and my colleagues. And it will contain a National Flood Insurance Program that is much better than what we have right now.
4772-- that is the bill I just talked about--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; and I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
First, the majority of the homes covered under the Flood Insurance Program are not second homes, and it is not a giveaway for millionaires. If you just come and spend some time in Louisiana and in other States that aren't even on the coast, you will see that these are working people--working men and working women.
Point two, the most that you can receive--the most coverage that you can buy--under the National Flood Insurance Program is $250,000. That is it, and that is for structural damage. You can buy an extra hundred thousand dollars for contents.
Point three, everybody in America is not rich who owns a home. The median--median--cost of a home in America today is $406,000. That means that half of homes cost less, but half cost way more. That is the result of a lot of factors, including, but not limited to, inflation. As I said earlier, it is one of the reasons that the average first-time home buyer in America today is no longer 28; it is 38. It just costs a lot to buy a home today.
So when someone talks about a $500,000 home and somebody being rich who owns a $500,000 home, I don't think that accurately reflects reality. I just don't.
No. 2, the idea to extend this only to a primary residence, I know a lot of hard-working women and men who work a day job and have also saved their money and bought rental homes that they rent out and try to build equity in to give them something to live on during retirement.
These are not wealthy people. These are working women and working men. And I don't know--they are not millionaires living on the coast. That is just a jaundiced view of the Flood Insurance Program, at least in Louisiana.
And I don't know why we would deny those people the right to buy two or three more rental homes to rent out and build equity in for their retirement. They are not going to be able to borrow the money to buy those homes if they can't get flood insurance. No institution will loan it to them.
Finally, the point I will make--and I say this with all due respect. I just spent 4 years listening to some of my colleagues talking about the big, bad, nasty, rich people in America. You know, when I came up, success--financial success and otherwise--and, certainly, there are ways to define success other than finances. But one of the ways in America we do so--we do assign success--is financially.
And I was raised in America to admire people who worked hard and saved their money and invested their money and became successful financially. I regret that we have reached the point in America--and I hope it ends under the new administration--where we just constantly go around denigrating success in America, including but not limited to financial and otherwise.
And for that reason, with respect, I decline the request to modify.
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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, reserving the right to respectfully respond to my colleague's request for a modification, let me just say that I love Cher. I mean, I just remember Sonny and Cher when they were both on TV. Sonny was a Congressman for a while. But I think Cher is what cool looks like. I don't agree with much of her politics, but Cher is equaled in her coolness only by Nick Cage.
I love Nick Cage. I just saw a movie that he did not long ago. I can't remember the name of it. But he was--typically in his movies, he plays these deeply weird characters, you know. He was a truffles hunter, and he had a pig, a special pig that would hunt for truffles, and the bad guys hurt his pig. Well, Nick hurt them. I think he ended up killing them, but before he killed them, he hurt them the entire time they were dying. It was a great movie. I love Nicolas Cage, and I appreciate Rand reminding me of it. I might go home tonight and watch a Nick Cage movie.
But let me get out of la-la land and go back to reality. No. 1, I know my friend didn't mean to give you this impression, but nobody gives you flood insurance. Let me say that again. Nobody gives you flood insurance; you have to buy it. So this idea that the government is somehow giving Cher and Nick Cage and President Biden and--I don't know--who else did you mention? I don't know. Whoever else he mentioned, they don't get free insurance from the government; they have to buy it. That is point one.
No. 2, the price of flood insurance under Risk Rating 2.0--boy, anybody who has bought flood insurance lately is going to see how high the prices have gone. There was a time when the program was subsidized, but it is not being subsidized anymore. In fact, a lot of people have had to drop their flood insurance because they just can't afford it anymore. It is just way too expensive.
I guess point three that I would make is that 99 and 9999 tenths percent of the people who buy flood insurance in America--we are not talking about Phil Collins here. We are not talking about Cher. We are not talking about Nick Cage. We are talking about working men and working women. And this idea that we are going to cap the price of a home--I know places in America today where a $2 million home gets you virtually nothing. Go check out California. Go check out Manhattan. I mean, the housing inflation has just been dramatic. If it hadn't been, I might consider what Rand is proposing.
But the truth is, and I would like the record to reflect this, what Senator Paul is proposing to do is that we gut a program that doesn't give anything to anybody. You have to buy the insurance that is not available for most people in the private sector, without which they can't buy a home because their lender won't loan them money. If you let this program expire, you are not going to only hurt working women and working men who are trying to buy a home, you are going to destroy the real estate market as well.
Finally--I will say it again--I really hope we come to a time when we don't spend our time on the Senate floor denigrating success in America, trying to say: If you are rich, you are bad. You must have gotten rich because you stole the money or oppressed somebody.
That is not an America I want to live in.
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Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you, Madam President.
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