Risk Rating
Floor Speech
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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I know you have a family legacy in Florida. You will appreciate that along the gulf coast and certainly in Louisiana, people in Louisiana are preparing for hurricanes.
I just had a meeting with the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, and they sent me some photos of some Lake Charles homes. I am saying this in the context of a discussion about flood insurance and what has happened that just seems irrational.
To reduce their risk of flooding and therefore their monthly flood insurance premiums, people have paid to elevate their homes. It makes sense. If you get floodwaters, it works. And it costs anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000. If your foundation needs repair, there is another $25,000 on top of that. If you have to fully replace your foundation, that can be another $100,000. But if it lowers your flood insurance premiums, it can be a worthwhile investment. You lift your homes, and you may not flood.
Here is this home, a similar home. You can see, whereas the neighbors are flooding in this one, an elevation like this prevents a flood, in this picture. That home is not flooding. Their insurance premium should go down.
But after spending tens of thousands of dollars to mitigate one's risk of flooding, they are still seeing high insurance premiums. They are getting the worst of both worlds. They had to pay to elevate their home, successfully preventing flooding; despite that, they are having to pay much higher insurance premiums.
Let's put up the chart of prices. Two properties. This is before they elevated their home, after they elevated their home. At first, it worked. They go from $12,000 a year to $758, from $4,500 to $751. This is an investment which would lower the cost of flood insurance, saving the National Flood Insurance Program money; therefore, it is worthwhile to raise your home.
Now, however, under a new system called Risk Rating 2.0, it doesn't matter. Here, they pay tens of thousands of dollars to elevate their home, and under this new system, their premium is back up to $9,800 or to $7,300--in this case, higher than it was before they elevated their home. The percentage increase is about 1,200 percent. The percentage increase here is almost 900 percent. It does not make sense.
By the way, why would you pay to elevate your home if you get the double whammy of paying to elevate and then your premiums, in some cases, are higher than when they started?
These are just two examples of people who did everything right, did what they were supposed to--they are not going to flood--and yet, after Risk Rating 2.0, this is what happened. I don't know if people still say ``ripped off,'' but they feel ripped off. They feel as if they did what was right and they have been punished and penalized because the premiums almost or in some cases more than doubled relative to what happens.
Now, these are nice homes, but they are not castles. These are middle-income families. The neighbor is driving a pickup truck. It looks a little bit--the Presiding Officer is a car dealer. That doesn't look like it is a 2025. It is a good truck. It is a good family. These are not wealthy families. They are good, middle-income families, spending tens of thousands of dollars to elevate their home, and yet, still, their premium continues to rise.
So with Risk Rating 2.0 driving up costs for lower and middle-income families, about a fifth of those enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program will be forced to drop their coverage over the next 10 years, OK? You raise premiums, and you raise them to a degree that 20 percent of the people--typically the lowest risk--drop their coverage. Then the Flood Insurance Program has to spread its risk over a smaller base, which means it elevates the premiums even more, and so those who need it least are the next 20 percent to drop off. This initiates what is called an actuarial death spiral.
Risk Rating 2.0 is like termites eating away at the foundation of a house, and if we do nothing, the home is going to collapse.
I introduced legislation in February to give low- and middle-income households enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program a 33- percent reduction in their premium in the form of a refundable tax credit that would go straight to their premium payment at the time it is due.
Hurricane season won't wait on those who need flood insurance. Americans in my State and across the country need relief now. If we really want to put Americans first, we can start by making the National Flood Insurance Program affordable now and keeping it affordable 10 to 15 years from now. It is a pocketbook issue, but when you flood, like folks in Louisiana and other States have, it becomes a personal issue.
Since the start of 2025, at least 21 Americans across 8 States have died as a result of flooding and storms hitting their communities. Millions have been left without power or evacuated from their homes. And when you hear ``flood insurance''--hey, I don't live in a coastal State. I don't live in Florida or Louisiana. Why does it bother me? My home will not get destroyed.
I wish that were true. This isn't a one-State problem; it is a one- nation problem. All 50 States have National Flood Insurance Program policyholders. The darker the color, the more likely the flooding. Missouri is in a dark color. New York State--minimal coastline--is in a dark color. Pennsylvania is in a dark color.
This is called river ring flooding, where you have a river and it comes down like this, and people building in the valley get flooded because the river overflows its banks, and it fills up that V-shaped valley. So that is why you would see flooding.
And so that is why you see flooding here in the darker--not as dark, but still dark.
You have the Dakotas also having problems with flooding. So it is a 50-State problem. And in these States, there are many who don't have flood insurance, and the time will come when they wish that they did.
The National Flood Insurance Program can provide certainty for individuals and for their families. Maybe you won't see flooding as extreme as losing a home. I sure hope you don't. But I am not just talking about the worst case scenario.
Let's imagine going back to this picture. The family didn't get their home completely flooded. The family got 4 inches of water in their living room. Their carpets are destroyed. If their floor is anything but concrete, it is destroyed. If you have furniture in there that is cloth, it is destroyed. If you get mold, then you are going to have to rip out the sheetrock and replace wherever you had sheetrock. Two to 3 inches destroys the carpet. In fact, the most expensive 3 inches in a flood are the first 3 inches. And that is what makes flooding so difficult for a middle-income family to recover from.
And for many, the National Flood Insurance Program is the only option they have. Now, by the way, the program designed to help them is failing them, and when millions of Americans are being impacted, Washington should act.
Let me be clear: the National Flood Insurance Program is a Federal program, meaning that Congress and the President can change and improve it. We just need to have the will.
So I urge my colleagues to join me in working with the Trump administration to end Risk Rating 2.0.
In 2019, my office worked with the Trump administration to successfully delay Risk Rating 2.0 because of the lack of transparency as to how FEMA was calculating the rates. President Trump understood then and understands now that Americans are tired of being ripped off.
When rivers swell, when coastlines have rising water, Americans should not have to fear the cost of rebuilding without affordable insurance. So let's make the National Flood Insurance Program affordable, accountable, and sustainable.
Severe weather is relentless. We must be too.
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