The Sun Herald has consistently reported Roger Wicker would make Hurricane Katrina recovery the major part of his maiden Senate speech and they were true to their word. Perhaps Congressman Taylor now has a true champion for the multi peril concept in the Senate. Without further analysis here is the insurance exerpt of Senator Wicker’s maiden Senate speech:
Much has been done, but there is much left to do.Chairman Donald Powell, the Federal Coordinator for the Office of Gulf Coast rebuilding, acknowledged these challenges last week when he announced he was stepping down. He said it would be “some time before the area recovered.”I say this to my colleagues in the United States Senate: Katrina is not over. There are tall hurdles still to overcome. There is more the United States Congress must do.The most urgent issue facing the Mississippi Gulf Coast is insurance. If you can’t insure it, you can’t build it or finance it. The rising cost of insurance cripples the efforts of small businesses, increases the cost of home-ownership, and drives rental rates beyond affordability.This is not just an issue for Mississippi. From Bar Harbor, Maine to Brownsville, Texas, millions of Americans live near the coastline, in the path of a future hurricane. For many years, insurance companies have refused to offer insurance protection for water damage caused by hurricanes; this led to the creation of the National Flood Insurance Program. After Katrina, the most important question for a homeowner or a small businessman was “wind or water?”
Wind versus water. That is the debate which still occurs today in courtrooms on the Mississippi Gulf Coast between insurance companies and storm victims.
This debate is what necessitated the multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations package this body approved after Katrina, and unless Congress changes the law, the wind versus water debate will result in a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations package after the next big hurricane – wherever it may land.
Even worse, since Katrina, it is also common practice for insurance companies to not offer wind insurance at a rate that is even close to affordable. This is driving more and more homeowners and business owners into a state-sponsored wind pool, which acts as an insurer of last resort. But this is not a reasonable long-term solution, because too much risk is being placed in a too small of a pool.
The best solution available is to allow homeowners to purchase wind and flood insurance coverage in the same policy.
This will not only help the storm victims so they can know their hurricane damage will be covered; it also will protect the United States taxpayer. The American people are the most generous in the world, and their elected representatives will continue to respond to natural disasters, whether it is a hurricane on the East Coast or an earthquake in California, with supplemental disaster appropriations packages. But the size of these packages will be smaller if more people have insurance.
As a member of the House, I voted for Congressman Gene Taylor’s multi-peril insurance legislation when it passed last September. I am committed to achieving the same success here in the Senate.