"The Senate Banking Committee unanimously passed a Bill Thursday to reform the National Flood Insurance Program."
Just got the word on this. I confess to not knowing what the status is on this. Has it passed the House? It appears it passed the Senate in tact. So will we get a formal revision? Effective date? Will we get a grace period? Where do we stand ?

Without going into discussion about how a bill becomes a law, this means that there is some impitus to change the current law and that it has only a few more hurdles.

We might be looking at some new rules. I suppose that if I was a better I would say it is likely. But two weeks from now the odds may change.

I am dreading it. I just finished my FDIC compliance exam and had NO problems with Flood but upping the fee from $350 per offense to $2,000 to offense makes me much more wary of the situation!!

The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee past a bill titled “Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2006.” It is similar to H.R. 4973 that is up for vote by the full house. The House bill has the same name.
They will still need to workout some differences.
Both the Senate and House bills would change the CMP from $350 to $2,000 for each violation. However, the House bill set a total limit to all violations at $1,000,000, but the Senate bill sets no limit for all violations.
The House bill would increase the amount of insurance available but the Senate makes no changes to the total available.
Some other changes recommended by the Senate include:
Redefine the term 500-yr flood plain and 100-yr flood plain
All state chartered financial institutions would be subject to the same requirements of federal depository institutions to maintain mandatory flood
Requires that flood insurance payments be placed into an escrow account on behalf of the borrower.
Stay tuned, there will be more.