Click to view Congresswoman Miller’s comments on NFIP

WASHINGTON – U.S. Congresswoman Candice Miller (MI-10) today spoke out in opposition to the final passage of the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act (H.R. 5114). Congresswoman Miller sought to amend the bill and was successful in attaching an amendment which will study a variety of ways to make the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) fairer for Michigan property owners.

“Michigan citizens pay more into the NFIP than they will ever get out of it and this fact alone indicates that there is a disconnect between price of the policy premiums and the actual risk,” Miller said. “With my amendment, the GAO will look at regionalization of the NFIP as a means to correct this imbalance. Regions with vastly different risk should not be in the business of subsidizing regions with known weather related risk and under a modified regionalization plan, states like Michigan would no longer be forced to subsidize other parts of the nation with substantially higher risk.”

“Directing the GAO to look at several ways to fix a severely flawed program is a common sense remedy to determine the future of this troubled program that is more than $19 billion dollars in the red. Ultimately, I had to vote against final passage of this bill because my home state of Michigan has become the NFIP’s personal ATM machine — this has to stop. Taxpayers should not be bailing out this program with infusions of cash from the Treasury as it has done several times of the last few years and the time for reforming the NFIP is past due,” Miller concluded.

The Miller Amendment, which the House agreed to, will require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study on potential long-term reforms of the program, including:
• Ways the private insurance market can contribute to insuring against flood damage.
• The impact on the NFIP if communities were to opt-out of the program.
• The feasibility of regionalizing the NFIP based on FEMA’s 10 geographic regions which should result in premiums more reflective of each region’s risk.
Click to view Congresswoman Miller’s comments on the amendment

Background: Since 1978, Michigan residents have received $44 Million Dollars in claims from the NFIP; however our premiums for this year alone will be more than $19 Million Dollars, which means that two years of premiums would have covered all of our losses since 1978. Michigan has paid over $200 Million dollars in premiums, so we have sent more than $150 Million to other states since 1978. Michigan residents carry a disproportionately high burden of flood insurance premiums, given their relatively low risk. For example, the average premium for flood insurance in Michigan is $764 and the average premium for Louisiana is $647.

The United States is only industrialized nation that uses our form of governmentally administered flood insurance. In every other industrialized nation, this is done by the private insurance industry. In lieu of a government run and mandated flood insurance program, the role of the U.S government should be to create and maintain accurate flood maps and have those that live in flood-prone areas to “pay their own freight” by purchasing private flood insurance.

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