Save BRIC Act
Introduced April 14, 2025 · Last action April 14, 2025
Plain English Summary
This bill restores and makes mandatory the BRIC (Building Resilient Communities and Infrastructure) federal predisaster mitigation grant program, which provides federal funds to help communities and property owners reduce damage from future floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and extreme heat before disasters strike. The bill changes the language in the Stafford Act from discretionary ('may provide') to mandatory ('shall provide'), meaning the President would be legally required to fund predisaster mitigation measures rather than having the option to skip them.
Who benefits
State and local governments, Native American tribes, nonprofit organizations, and property owners in disaster-prone communities (especially those vulnerable to flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, and extreme heat events); engineering and construction firms hired to perform mitigation work (elevation, retrofitting, relocation, hardening); disaster recovery and emergency management agencies; insurance companies (indirectly, through reduced claims); communities with limited budgets for self-funded mitigation infrastructure.
Who pays / loses
Federal taxpayers who fund the mandatory mitigation grants; the federal treasury (through required spending); communities or groups not designated as disaster-prone that receive no direct benefit from the grants; federal agencies that must allocate budgets to administer the program.
Funding & Lobbying Interests
Organizations with financial interest in restoring BRIC funding include: state emergency management agencies, municipal governments, the construction and engineering industries (who perform mitigation work), disaster preparedness nonprofits, insurance companies and their trade associations (American Insurance Association, Property Casualty Insurers Association), real estate developers in flood and hurricane zones, and flood mitigation equipment suppliers. The bill cites the 2019 BRIC program creation under the Trump administration and references $4 billion in clawed-back grants, suggesting that state and local government budget directors and disaster resilience advocates are primary constituencies pushing restoration.
Political Impact
Affected Groups
State and local governments (all 50 states plus territories and tribal nations eligible for BRIC grants); residents of the 27 U.S. communities that experienced billion-dollar disasters in 2024 alone; low-income and disadvantaged communities in coastal, flood-prone, and seismic zones who lack private capital for mitigation; construction workers and engineers in states with high disaster risk; property owners in FEMA-designated high-hazard zones.
Political Subtext
Proponents frame this as a fiscally prudent measure: the bill cites research that every $1 spent on predisaster mitigation saves $13 in recovery costs, positioning it as a cost-saving investment rather than an expense. The bill explicitly names the 2025 cancellation of BRIC and clawback of $4 billion as "wrongful," framing restoration as reversing a mistake. Critics would likely argue that mandatory federal spending on mitigation represents unfunded liability, that discretionary authority allows fiscal flexibility during budget constraints, and that mitigation responsibility should rest with states and private insurers. The co-sponsorship by Mr. Stanton (D-Arizona) and Mr. Bresnahan (R-Michigan) signals bipartisan disaster preparedness support, likely reflecting constituent pressure from communities hit by 2024 disaster events. Non-partisan evidence (FEMA, National Institute of Standards and Technology, academic studies) consistently supports the cost-benefit ratio cited in the bill, though the $13 savings figure is an upper-bound estimate and results vary by project type and location.
Real-World Stakes
If this passes: Federal spending on predisaster mitigation becomes mandatory rather than discretionary, locking in annual or multi-year funding for BRIC-eligible projects. Communities that lost $4 billion in grants after the 2025 cancellation regain access to federal mitigation funding for projects like elevated homes in flood zones, hurricane-hardened infrastructure, and extreme heat cooling centers. The federal government cannot zero out the program without changing statute. If this fails: The BRIC program remains cancelled, and communities must fund mitigation from local budgets or private sources; low-income communities face higher post-disaster recovery costs; disaster damages continue to escalate (27 billion-dollar events in 2024 alone). Analogous precedents include FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), which operates as discretionary-within-disaster-recovery and has been credited with reducing repeat flooding losses in communities like Houston and New Orleans; the National Flood Insurance Program, which shifted costs to private insurers when federal retrofitting grants were unavailable. Louisiana's state-level predisaster mitigation after Hurricane Katrina (2005) reduced subsequent hurricane damage costs. No CBO cost estimate is provided in the bill text, but FEMA estimates predisaster mitigation reduces average recovery costs by 40–60% per project.
Sponsor
Sponsor information not available.
Vote Record
No recorded votes.
Campaign Finance — Primary Sponsor
No campaign finance data available yet.
501(c)(4) disclosure: Contributions from 501(c)(4) "dark money" organizations are not required to be publicly disclosed and are not reflected in the figures above. Data sourced from FEC public disclosure filings.
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