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Flood insurance debt cancellation (2017)
Who: The National Flood Insurance Program (and, through it, its policyholders). What: Congress cancelled $16B of the program's debt to the Treasury after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, the first cancellation in its history.
$16.0B
committed or authorized
$0
recovered (repayments, dividends, fees)
$16.0B
net cost (debt cancelled)
Outcome The program still owes the Treasury about $22.5B (2026).
Legal authority: P.L. 115-72, Section 308.
Method. A bailout here means federal money, loans, loan guarantees, or debt relief aimed at specific companies, industries, or groups to prevent or make up for losses. Stimulus checks and unemployment benefits for households, aid to state and local governments, regular farm-bill programs, and government stakes in companies that were not failing are left out (the closest calls are listed under “Not counted”). “Paid out” is money actually disbursed (for AIG, the maximum committed, because the Federal Reserve's drawn amounts are not reported as one figure). Net cost or profit is the latest official figure; official sources measure it differently (cash in and out, Treasury lifetime estimates, or CBO present-value estimates), so each figure carries its basis. The SVB and Signature figure is a cost to the FDIC's deposit insurance fund, which banks finance, not to the Treasury. Dollar amounts are nominal (not adjusted for inflation).
Sources:
CRS IN10784 (Mar 2026) All sources for this section are also collected on the Sources page. Researched September 2026.