Support the Barrasso Amendments to S. 1940. Stop Back Door Climate Change and Insurance Mandate Legislation
It’s a liberal cocktail of big government that no one wants to drink and it’s being served to you in the Flood Insurance bill, S. 1940. The bill is designed to return fiscal solvency back to the Federal Flood Insurance Program (FFIP) which was started back in the 1960’s. The program, like most other federal schemes deemed “self-sustaining” has been drowning, mind the pun, in debt.
The Flood Insurance bill is a 5 year extension of funding that doesn’t address the cyclical issues that created the $18 billion debt plus interest payments that FFIP has racked up. Worse yet it contains language that is essentially back-door climate change legislation.
The real kicker? It’s climate change legislation bundled with an insurance mandate.
Sections of S. 1940 contain language that requires computers to model weather patterns, in anticipation of global warming, to try and predict which areas are likely to flood… as far away as 50 years from now. While there are historical records dating back hundreds of years documenting areas susceptible to floods, this legislation hopes to predict new areas that have never flooded before. This is a lofty goal, given the fact that most meteorologists would be hard pressed to predict the weather more than 10 days from now.
Per-usual, reality isn’t going to stand in the way of Congress. If your home of business, which may be at no flood risk whatsoever today, is in an area flagged as an area that has at least a 1 percent chance of flooding within the next 50 years, assuming that climate change in the form of global warming is actually happening, then you could be forced to purchase flood insurance under this program.
While the bill extending funding is likely to pass, Senator Barrasso (R-WY) has introduced two amendments to the legislation to strip away the back door climate change language. His first amendment would strike the sections out of the bill that require global warming computer models be used to determine the size and scope of flood maps that mandate who has to pay for flood insurance. The second amendment would define climate change as “natural climate variability”, in essence striking language assuming of the existence of global warming and replacing it with words that more appropriately address what’s actually going on: weather.
Even the members of the current administration have expressed their doubts about mandating that people in an already ailing economy be forced by the government to purchase what essentially amounts to an umbrella in the Sahara.
“We cannot predict with certainty what the weather, and the subsequence impact on the landscape will be in Wyoming in 5 years, 10 years, or 50 years from now.” – Then Nominee Dan Ashe, current Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
While it may be too late to stop S. 1940, it’s not too late for you to call your senators and urge them to stop backdoor climate change legislation and unnecessary and expensive insurance mandates by supporting the Barrasso Amendments to S. 1940. (Amendment OLL12517, and OLL12519)
