Congress’ U-turn on flood insurance reform shows that lawmaking power can very quickly go from free rein to constrained

What influences Congress into passing certain reforms when it does? To investigate this question, Logan Strother looks at two reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program: the first drastically reduced or eliminated flood insurance subsidies, while the second only two years later restored them. He argues that Congress effectively reversed course because the passage of the first reform made the issue much more important to voters than it had been before. While Congress had previously been able to act with a relatively free hand, once voters became interested, legislators had incentive to undo their own reforms.