Senate Votes to Renew Flood Insurance Program Part 2: The Politics

Rather than adding on to Nowdy’s post I’ll add the text of today’s Sun Herald Op-Ed on the S. 2284 vote. For what ever reason they mixed in this Reuters story in the online page by Kevin Drawbaugh on the Senate vote which I thought was both fact based and well written. On the front page of today’s Sun Herald is this AP story. We duly noted both Senators Wicker and Cochran voted in favor of S. 2284 while Florida’s Bill Nelson joined Mary Landrieu and David Vitter in voting against passage.

The Mississippi politics behind the vote are somewhat ironic. I suspect Wicker and Cochran’s final yes vote was the price for getting a vote on the wind amendment. Given Travis Childer’s victory in the first district yesterday, 3 of 4 Mississippi’s US Representatives are Democrats. Even hard core Republicans like Alan Lange at Yallpolitics.com now concede the macro political trend away from the GOP may indeed wash over entire state as surely as Katrina’s water washed away the coast. In all honesty I’ve never cared much for Thad Cochran but not for political reasons - he’s always struck me as the Senator for the wealthy but he’ll occupy the seat as long as he wants it. Roger Wicker is the one that is vulnerable as Alan Lange acknowledged today. I personally think Ronnie Musgrove is a deeply flawed candidate but the race is shaping up to be very competitive.

At slabbed we’re happy Senator Wicker’s wind amendment got a vote. But we need more than a vote. We need a solution. In these months leading up to the November election we’ll continue to evaluate the candidates for Trent Lott’s old Senate seat.

Few who come here leave unchanged in some way. As the local media pulls out all the stops covering the Carter-Habitat work project, the paper calls for those who are here volunteering to help us get the word out. Now for the promised Sun Herald editorial:

Considering how much volunteers from across the nation have done for South Mississippians since Hurricane Katrina, it hardly seems appropriate to ask one more favor of them. But residents of other states - and other congressional districts - can do something of vital importance for us when they return home: they can tell the truth about us.

They can tell their friends and family and members of Congress that we do not all live in beachfront mansions and expect taxpayers a thousand miles away to pick up the tab when our verandas are blown away.

They can bear witness to the fact that we are a collection of diverse communities striving to perfect the American dream and determined not to settle for second best.

They can tell anyone who’ll listen that South Mississippians are among the nation’s last shipbuilders and shrimpers. That South Mississippians provide the smiles and the services essential to creating the nation’s newest top tier resort destination.

They can verify that South Mississippians are in the grip of an insurance crisis that is spreading along the nation’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts. And they can ask their senators and representatives what they think about adding wind damage coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program.

Odds are their congressman will favor the idea, since the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly late last year to create a federal multi-peril insurance program. Odds are their senators will oppose the idea, since the Senate voted overwhelmingly last week to reform but not to expand the flood insurance program.

We would rather the private sector solve this problem. But increasingly, private insurance companies are refusing to insure properties along the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines.

It is a familiar pattern.

Congress created the National Flood Insurance Program 40 years ago to fill a gap in coverage created by a private insurance industry frightened by the risk of floods. A similar gap in the private insurance market is again forming because of a fear of hurricane-force winds.

Since Congress assumed a similar insurance risk 40 years ago for flooding, many coastal homeowners are again looking to Congress for wind coverage.

Residents of the Midwest would be doing the same thing if, in addition to not insuring them against the threat of an overflowing Mississippi or Missouri, their private insurance companies were also rejecting their applications for tornado coverage.

Imagine how families that have resided in Tornado Alley for generations would feel if they were told to move out of harm’s way because they are at risk of being blown away.

Well, that is the way families that have lived for generations on or near the Mississippi Sound feel: betrayed and outraged.

We still prefer that a solution for all this come from innovative thinking in the private sector. But until it does, Congress should address this inequity in the nation’s insurance system.