Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse paired his last hearing as chair of the Senate Budget Committee with the release of a lengthy report correlating the instability of the homeowners’ insurance market to the worsening climate crisis.
That report is the culmination of a monthslong investigation as well as a capstone on what the Rhode Island Democrat sought to achieve in effectively turning the Budget panel into a de facto climate committee. Republicans have repeatedly complained about that focus.
The Wednesday hearing, which was thematically linked to the new report analyzing renewal data for nearly two dozen different homeowners’ insurance policies, was the 21st climate-focused hearing held by the Senate Budget Committee this Congress.
“We repeatedly heard about the central role that insurance affordability and availability play in our economic system,” Whitehouse said in opening remarks. “When insurance becomes unavailable, it can become impossible to get a mortgage. And when the pool of buyers is limited to those who can pay cash, that’s a lot fewer buyers, and property values suffer.”
