The federal flood insurance program is going broke after years of bureaucratic inattention and political abuse. The program owes the Treasury $20 billion. It takes in just $2 billion a year in premiums and one third of that sum is used to pay interest on the debt.

Years ago federally subsidized flood insurance replaced private insurance for homeowners who could no longer find a private insurer willing to cover their homes. For people who chose to build in flood-prone areas, the Reagan Administration enacted a law called the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (COBRA). Instead of restricting development in flood zones, the law provided that the government would not subsidize such construction, through flood insurance or infrastructure such as roads.

However, Congress has repeatedly altered the covered territory, often in response to wealthy property owners who want exemption. Lawmakers have redrawn COBRA maps more than 40 times in the past 15 years and many of these taxpayer-subsidized exemptions are for extremely valuable properties – coastal homes.

While they couldn’t manage a Federal Budget bill this year, Congress did find the time to pass two bills carving out new exceptions to restricted areas. One of the bills benefited Jekyll Island, a vacation spot off Georgia’s coast that is targeted for wealthy beach homes, while another helped a mostly undeveloped 10-lot subdivision on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Indeed, in the two COBRA bills that were passed they added hundreds of high-risk properties that literally paved the way for construction in flood prone areas.

Savannah Rep. Jack Kingston, who sponsored the Jekyll Island bill, agreed that the exemptions raise valid questions about the system. But he said he took up the cause because he believed his constituents were being unfairly harmed by a map error. And, he added, “It’s better to have people insured than to have to pay the money out in the wake of a disaster like Katrina.”

Huh?