Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse says he's open to calling private insurers to testify about their fossil fuel industry relationships.
Why it matters: Whitehouse wants to know why insurance companies are paring back coverage in some areas due to climate hazards while continuing to insure oil and gas projects.
Driving the news: The Budget Committee is still waiting on answers after a second round of oversight letters were sent to insurers, the Rhode Island senator told Axios.
- Whitehouse declined to say if insurers have cooperated with the committee since it launched a probe into them over the summer.
- "We're still kind of in the middle of the process. I wouldn't want to start calling them out yet."
Once those responses come in, bringing them before his committee is "totally" on the table, he said.
- "It's weird. They have such huge economic incentives to head off the climate risks ... and the solution to withdraw from markets and shrink their footprint is hardly an ideal solution."
The bottom line: Insurers are increasingly under fire in Congress as coastal constituents feel the strain of increasingly hazardous storms and floods.
