The National Association of REALTORS is pleased to report that the Senate passed H.R. 26, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015, by a vote of 93-4. This bill passed the House yesterday (by a vote of 416-5), and will now be sent to the President for signature into law.
Though it was disappointing that the Senate was unable to pass a reauthorization measure before adjourning at the end of 2014 (resulting in the program expiring on Dec. 31, 2014), we are pleased that leadership in both the House and Senate carried through on their assurances that reauthorizing this important program would be one of their top priorities in the 114th Congress. It was the very first order of business in the House, and was taken up the following day by the Senate.
The bill that passed is a 6-year reauthorization, keeping the TRIA program going through 2020. It also reduces the government’s exposure to risk by increasing the “trigger” amount from $100 million to $200 million, and raises the mandatory recoupment amount from $27.5 billion to $37.5 billion. Otherwise, it makes few changes to a program that has kept Terrorism Insurance affordable and available throughout the country since 2002, at virtually no cost to taxpayers.
NAR has been advocating strongly in support of TRIA reauthorization for over a year now – we area steering committee member of the Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism (CIAT), have sent many letters to the House and Senate urging renewal, conducted two “Calls for Action” in 2014 on the issue, and have participated in hill visits with key Congressional offices to educate them on the program and its importance to the commercial real estate sector as well as the economy as a whole.
For more information on TRIA and NAR’s advocacy efforts on this issue, please visit our TRIA page on realtor.org: http://www.realtor.org/topics/terrorism-risk-insurance-act-tria
