Flood Insurance Reform Bill Costs a Fortune

To the Editor:
I really think it’s time for term limits in Congress. If Frank LoBiondo wasn’t in Congress back in 2012, there’s a chance that my house and most (if not all) the houses in my neighborhood would not have lost up to half their value last week.
LoBiondo and all but one member of the N.J. delegation in Congress voted for the Biggert/Waters flood insurance reform bill. This bill raised the flood insurance premiums for all us wealthy people in Villas, North Cape May, and other parts of Lower township, as well as Del Haven and other towns in Cape May and Cumberland County by about 500 percent up to $10,000 a year, according to Lower Township Mayor Mike Beck.
When I bought my home in 1998 we didn’t need flood insurance because it never floods here, but that’s all changed thanks to FEMA and big insurance. The excuse from the congressman was that we didn’t expect this. My question to him is: Did you read the bill or did you have a Nancy Pelosi moment and chose to pass it so you could find out what was in it?
Biggert/Waters was a stand-alone bill for two years. LoBiondo had plenty of time to read it before it was passed as a side bill in a transportation funding bill. Big insurance lobbied for this for seven years and held a party when it passed. The first red flag for me would have been the sponsors: Biggert from Michigan (not many hurricanes there) and Waters from California.
FEMA says the fund was in the red but the truth is that they collected $64.3 billion in premiums and paid out $56.4 billion to policyholders in the life of the fund. Where the other $8.9 billion went is a mystery I suppose. It’s like they say in Congress, a billion here a billon there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
In my retirement I now have a house worth about half its value, and can look forward to spending three quarters of my Social Security check to big insurance every year if I chose to insure it. I assume my taxes are going to decrease by 50 percent?
Great job, Frank.