The National Flood Insurance Program, struggling with the costs of this year’s record hurricane season, will run out of money before Halloween unless Congress takes action, Bloomberg reports.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance program, “estimates potentially exhausting available NFIP funds the week of October 23.”
If that happens, the program will be unable to make claims payments to people whose homes have been damaged by hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria or Nate, or other disasters this year.
The federal government can’t borrow more money from the U.S. Treasury to pay those claims, because Congress has limited the flood program’s borrowing authority to $30.4 billion, which it has now reached.
