WASHINGTON – May 21, 2014 – (RealEstateRama) — Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12), Ranking Member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and GSEs, today released the following statement in response to Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Randy Neugebauer’s (TX-19) offer to meet with Financial Services Committee Democrats “in the very near future” to discuss reauthorizing TRIA.
“I welcome the opportunity to sit down with Chairman Neugebauer to discuss ways to move TRIA forward as quickly as possible.
“As Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in testimony to our committee two weeks ago, reauthorizing TRIA is ‘critically important,’ and ‘the sooner, the better.’ I’m glad that Chairman Neugebauer has taken this to heart, and I look forward to meeting with him to discuss this critical issue.”
Background:
At the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee hearing on May 20, 2014, Chairman Neugebauer stated about his draft TRIA proposal: “In the very near future, we hope to make some refinements in that framework, and sit down with the minority as well. Because it’s our goal, hopefully sometime in June, to put out a bipartisan — hopefully it will be a bipartisan — bill on TRIA, that we can move out of this committee, and hopefully then put it in the hands of leadership, and let them determine when we might look at passing that on the House floor.”
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many insurance companies excluded terrorism events from their insurance policies. As a result, Congress passed TRIA as a three year temporary program in 2002, which created a federal backstop to protect against terrorism related losses. Congress extended the program for two additional years in 2005 and for seven additional years in 2007. TRIA is currently scheduled to expire on December 31, 2014. Maloney is the lead Democratic co-sponsor of the TRIA Reauthorization Act of 2013 (H.R. 508), which would extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program for five years, through December 31, 2019.
