Stephanie Grace: Next Congress looking for a bipartisan success? Flood insurance could be the answer

Nov. 18--With the Senate still in Republican hands, the House soon to be run by Democrats and the 2020 presidential election season about to kick off in earnest, the general consensus is the next Congress won't be able to get much of anything done. Based on recent, highly divisive history, that's an entirely credible assessment.

But there are some issues where there's reason for hope.

My pick: A much-delayed rewrite of the National Flood Insurance Program.

The program is set to expire -- again -- on Nov. 30, after a series of short-term extensions as long-term planning foundered. Louisiana lawmakers are pushing for yet another extension in the lame duck session and will probably get it. Without that, current policies would still be honored but new ones couldn't be written, which means that real estate transactions where banks require flood policies would grind to a halt.

What comes next year is the real question.

The program, which serves a half million Louisiana households, is deeply in debt following a rash of catastrophic floods over the past decade and a half, starting with Hurricane Katrina. That's the bad news.

The good news is that as more states have flooded, more representatives of those states have joined Louisiana's lawmakers to push for a sustainable fix. The even better news, politically speaking, is that the affected areas include strongholds of both parties.

Some bridges across partisan lines have already been built.

Louisiana's two Republican senators have worked on legislation with Democratic partners: Bill Cassidy with New York's Kirsten Gillibrand and John Kennedy with New Jersey's Bob Menendez. Both of the Democrats, of course, represent areas that were badly damaged by Sandy, so they have a good idea of the challenges facing Louisiana. In the House, this is an issue on which Republican Steve Scalise and Democrat Cedric Richmond have partnered.

And one old obstacle has been removed. The chair of the House committee through which flood insurance legislation usually passes, Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling, is on his way out.

This isn't a surprise. Hensarling didn't run for reelection, and given Republican term limits on chairmanships, he would have moved on from leading the Financial Services Committee even if the GOP had kept its majority. But it is a major development because Hensarling is an avowed critic of government-subsidized flood insurance -- so much so that Scalise and other Republicans maneuvered to take the last major rewrite straight to the House floor in order to bypass him.

As far as the future shape of the program, there are some outstanding issues that tend to break along party lines. These include the role of the private sector (which has historically shied away from providing flood coverage, leaving it to the government), environmental concerns that making insurance affordable encourages development in flood-prone areas, and the extent to which government subsidies should mask actuarial risk.

But there are many more issues that should unite everyone. In the age of climate change-fueled extreme weather, red and blue areas are vulnerable, and Democratic and Republican voters live in real estate markets that would collapse if buyers couldn't get or afford insurance. The current program is badly underfunded, and its policies too often lead to rebuilding properties that have repeatedly flooded. More investment in flood-control infrastructure should be popular across the board.

That's where the White House could come in. President Donald Trump clearly enjoyed having his own party run all of Congress, and got his way on tax cuts and other highly partisan measures. But infrastructure spending is one area where he could well get Democratic support.

There's a deal to be made here. And who likes the sound of that more than Trump?

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