Congress Passes Seven-Year TRIA Extension

In an eleventh-hour bipartisan deal, Congress has passed legislation that would extend and slightly expand the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). The move came with the passage yesterday by the House of Representatives, 360-53, of a bill that agreed with the one that the Senate passed last month, thus scraping earlier House-passed versions.

The bill extends TRIA, a federal backstop program for private insurers in the event of a major terrorist attack, for seven years. The earlier House version, supported primarily by the insurance industry and elements of the real estate industry, would have extended the measure by 15 years and provided lower dollar amounts to trigger the federal backstop. But the Senate and the Bush administration were against such major expansions, so the ultimate bill is not so different than the original TRIA. The new bill does, however, now cover acts of terrorism committed by Americans, something the original TRIA did not do.

"It's a very good bill," Clifton E. Rodgers Jr., senior vice president of the Real Estate Roundtable, told CPN this morning. "It was down to the wire, and you never know what's going to happen with legislation at the last minute, but we think it's a good result."

Rodgers cited the looming deadline, and the potential impact on a wobbly US economy that the loss of the federal backstop might have had, as prime motivators to get Congress to agree on an extension. "Given the current economic uncertainty, TRIA was something that Congress couldn't afford not to do," he said.

The measure now goes to President Bush. The president has indicated that he will sign the bill before the end of the year.

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source: commercialpropertynews.com