Rep. Flood Fighting High Home/Auto Insurance Costs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Want to welcome Nebraska first District Congressman Mike Flood back
to the program. Mike, good morning, Hey, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm well. Thanks. We have talked a lot here on
this program, and certainly homeowners have failed it the high
cost of just owning a house, regardless of mortgage and
interests and maintenance. You've got burgeoning property taxes here in
many states right here, of course we do. And also
it's pretty universal that the cost of homeowners' insurance is

(00:30):
getting outrageous. You all in the Congress are trying to
do something about that. I'm glad to hear about it.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
What's the story, Well, there's really two drivers for the
increasing premiums. And when you're sitting in Nebraska and you
see those tornadoes last year and the damage we saw
in the Bennington area and Lincoln, you know, we get it.
We're seeing more severe weather, which is definitely driving up costs.
But what we're finding out nationwide is that third party

(00:59):
litigation is driving up the cost of home insurance all
over America. And by this, I mean and this is
going to shock people, and it really resonates in the
American Southeast. You've got like foreign growth funds from like
the United Arab Emirates. They have a sovereign fund where

(01:19):
they will come in and they will give a plaintiff's
lawyer in Georgia one point five million. Let's say we
had a traffic fatality on an interstate in Georgia. Sadly
someone dies. Planet lawyer now has one point five million.
They can go out and they can hire even more experts.
They can do accident reconstruction, they can do all this stuff.
If they hit a twenty million dollar verdict, this investor,

(01:43):
foreign investor can walk away with a ton of money.
And it's gaming our justice system. And that's actually a
bigger driver of our home insurance premiums than even weather peril.
And part of the problem.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Is even though it was even though it was a
traffic accident and had nothing to do with a home.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Right right right right, property and casually, so we're in
the property and casually lane all over America. Third party
litigation is fueling the skyrocketing costs. And what's said about
it in Nebraska is it's not us like our juries
are conservative. Our judges are not elected, they're appointed. We

(02:23):
are under the Missouri plan. For that we just you know,
you saw where Warner Trucking just got hit with hundreds
of millions of dollars down in Texas, and hopefully the
Supreme Court down there deals with it. But it's it's
driving property and casualty and home insurance premiums through the
roof because of this third party litigation.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
So what are the remedies. One of the reforms that
can be put in place by Congress.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, one of the one of the first things we
need to do is we need to we need to
have SIPHIUS, the committee of the US government that basically
says foreign investors need to be screen they have to
be legit. We need to get them to shut down
this foreign Sovereign Growth Fund investment in our courts. And

(03:12):
I think you know Jim Jordan, who will be coming
out to visit me later this summer in La Vesta.
He and the Judiciary Committee has several bills that will
hopefully try and shut down this third party litigation or
at least make people disclose who's doing it where the
money goes.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Wow. And I suppose the insurance combinats are saying, hey,
we have to spread this across the country. We can't
do it We can't do it state by state because.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Actually it's not the it's not your primaries, it's not
state farmer, it's their reinsures. Most of the reinsurers are
domiciled in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic or Europe and Swiss
Ray and all these others. So the reinsurance industry, and
here's an interesting statistic in Nebraska, in the last ten years,

(04:06):
for every dollar paid in a premium, one dollar and
thirty four cents has been paid in acclaim.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
That is why we're seeing a sixty percent increase in
our premiums because the reinsurance industry has reclassified Nebraska as
basically Florida. When it comes to severe weather. They say,
we're a severe connective storm you know region. So that's

(04:35):
that's bad.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Now you know why Berkshire Hathaway is seven hundred and
eighty thousand dollars a share because they're big into reassure it.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Now, what a racket. They price the risk, right, you
have to price the risk and the risk as the
weather peril has definitely gone up for us. But we
are also suffering from this third party litigation.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
And I want to got the Jim Jordan on air
when in town the visits. Oh yeah, make that happen.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
We can make that.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Okay, Hey, you are the newly elected chairman of the
Republican Main Street Caucus. What is that and what does
that mean for you? What will you be doing?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
So, you know, when McCarthy was Speaker, he always talked
about the Five Families, kind of a reference to the Godfather.
The Main Street Caucus has been on the rise when
I got here three years ago. They're about fifty members
and we meet a couple times a week, sometimes at
least once a week, usually have a Cabinet secretary or

(05:37):
somebody from the White House. And we also talked about hey,
what's going on this week? Where's it going? And I've
been running those meetings since January. The vice chair and
then the Speaker meets with quote unquote the five fabilis
the first day back. We're back every week, you know,
for about an hour and we basically talk about, Hey,
this is where we're going, this is what we're working on,

(05:59):
this is what we want. Hey, if you're going to
put this on the floor, this is what our members want.
And so there's eighty three members now the Main Street
Caucus and Dusty Johnson, who was the chair, has done
a great job. Good guy. He's running for governor of
South Dakota, so he's going to remain in Congress, but

(06:19):
he thought he ought to step down from that because
he's going to be running for governor, which is kind
of the practice when you run for another office in
the House. And I won the election unanimously without an
opponent this week, and there are five people vying for
vice chair. And you know, for me, I like it
because I'm at I'm at the adults table, right, Yeah,

(06:42):
very good.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
They just don't'll mess with you. I mean they found
out what forty eight other Nebraska senators found out, and
that is, don't mess with flood otherwise you're not going
to come out with all your body parts intact.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't know about that, I can tell you. And
somebody asked me the other day, what's it like running
a la you're in Nebraska. I said, well, it's kind
of like hurting kats of meth amphetamine.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Exactly before we run here. Do you know what's uh
you have anything to do in Congress with the trade
deals the administration is trying to do, and why the
hold up with Canada and Mexico and the EU. No.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
I mean, the short answer is no, but we are.
Actually Adrian Smith is the chairman of the Subcommittee on
Trade in the Way Its Means Committee, so he probably
intersects with a lot more of that than I do
on a daily basis. But our Trade ambassadors is doing
all of that Indonesia and know we just had that

(07:41):
announcement in Japan. But I hear you, the sooner all
that gets done, the better it is for all of.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Us, no doubt, Mike. Thanks appreciate the time always. Congressman
Mike Flood, Nebraska District one,