The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act is currently set to expire on December 31, after the Senate was unable to pass an extension Tuesday night.
The act provides a backstop for property insurers in case of a terrorist attack and is widely supported by the real estate industry. On Tuesday night, retiring Senator Tom Coburn held up the passage of the bill — which would extend TRIA by six years — over a states’ rights issue unrelated to terrorism insurance.
The Senate voted to renew the terrorism insurance program in July. House Republicans planned on sending the legislation – with revisions to Dodd-Frank — as a standalone bill, according to Politico. Democrats opposed those revisions, however. If the House and Senate had reached an agreement on the measure, TRIA would have been folded into the $1.1 trillion federal funding bill that Congress passed last week, the website noted.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a staunch supporter of the bill, said in a statement that he hopes the bill we be brought to the floor next year.
“We hope that next year, the House Republican leadership will work with us in the same bipartisan way that the Senate did when we passed a TRIA bill 93-4. We hope the House will pass a bill quickly because billions of dollars of projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk,” Schumer said.
The law, first signed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, created a government-backed insurance facility for businesses that suffered losses after such an event. [Politico] — Claire Moses