Simplifying Your Life, Not So Simple

On January 9, I had the pleasure of sharing spontaneous drinks and dinner with José Andrés, Washington’s first and only international celebrity chef. 

He had just launched China Chilcano, the latest in his burgeoning empire of restaurants, only three days old at the time, and he’s only a month away from opening yet another concept. He asked how I was doing, and I told him I’d had a great week—that a bill I’d been working on for literally 23 years at The Council (NARAB, attached to the TRIA extension), was birthed just the day before when the Senate passed it.

About then, another well-wisher approached José and congratulated him on his latest achievement. “Meet my friend Joel,” he says to the guy. “He’s either the best lobbyist I’ve ever met—or he’s the shittiest.”

Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been majorly associated with NARAB (“National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers”) in its multiple iterations since the early 1990s. It’s not the biggest thing I’ve worked on by any stretch—the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, the Affordable Care Act, and Dodd-Frank are all far more important to the nation, our member firms and your clients. But it has been the most painstaking.

We’ve snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory on so many occasions that it almost seemed preordained we’d lose again when TRIA failed in December. Facing implacable opposition to NARAB from retiring Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled the plug on TRIA and adjourned the Senate for the year—astonishing all of us who’d worked so hard on the legislation.

Much of the blame at the time went to Coburn, as he was the only announced senator down the stretch with a “hold” on the TRIA/NARAB legislation, but the truth is more complicated, as there was considerable liberal discontent with the legislation. That’s all water under the bridge now.

Within a couple days of the disaster, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both released strong statements saying they would put TRIA passage on the “early” priority list for January. Both kept their word.

Congress convened January 6. The House bill passed in December was re-enacted January 7, and the identical bill cleared the Senate January 8. President Obama signed the bill into law January 12. This followed critical leadership on the issue from Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, of the House Financial Services Committee, and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Now the work can begin to actually create NARAB—an interstate licensure clearinghouse for nonresident producer licensure. Decades of compromises to get the legislation to the finish line will now become complications you’ll hear about in the coming months. The governance of the body will come principally from state insurance commissioners and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Funding problems will emerge since no federal dollars or borrowing will be allowed. And there will be disagreements about the standards for NARAB membership.

The basic deal is this: Any producer first has to be properly licensed in his or her own state. Then on a purely optional basis, he/she can apply for membership in NARAB and meet whatever requirements are established. The applicant can then check off the states in which he/she needs a nonresident licensure, paying the applicable state fees. That all sounds really simple, but we’re sure in practice it will be akin to giving birth to a live squirrel.

The protracted lobbying effort initiated in 1992 by The Council’s forerunner organizations (the National Association of Casualty and Surety Agents and the National Association of Insurance Brokers) seems disproportionate. At its core, NARAB is simply an administrative mechanism to facilitate nonresident producer licensure. But since its inception, NARAB has been caught up in the push and pull of the broader debates over federal-versus-state insurance regulation. Many colleagues of mine are putting their children through college in this ongoing war of attrition.

My own children, meanwhile, are nonplussed by the history of NARAB, but here it is anyway. First it was a purely federal option, as a part of now-retired Rep. John Dingell’s, D-Mich., insurer solvency legislation, which would have created an Optional Federal Charter for insurers. That went nowhere. Then we spun it off as a stand-alone and waged a lonely battle for years, culminating in the “NARAB 1” title of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. To sneak it through Congress over the opposition of then-Sen. Phil Gramm (for months, my colleagues referred to me as “Dead Man Walking” in assumption that Gramm would prevail), we had to dumb down the provision. If a majority of states passed reciprocal licensing laws, there would be no NARAB. So a majority of states did so, which was welcome. But it wasn’t enough.

In the past decade, the coalition of NARAB supporters has grown substantially, with other producer organizations and the NAIC itself moving from a position of opposition to strong support over the years. In that decade, NARAB passed the House on at least six occasions (I lose count), both as a stand-alone measure and as part of other reforms.

As we now move to implementation issues, I will pause to give thanks for the many in Congress who made this happen. Most recently, our champions and authors were Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and now-retired Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. We can’t thank them enough. And I think back to the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley debate, when Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., and the late Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., fought so hard for NARAB.

I guess it’s easier to be gracious in victory, but we wish all the best for Sen. Coburn, who did everything he could to beat NARAB. I regarded him as an obstinate SOB for many months, but he always acted out of his own federalism principles. He retired from the Senate when his cancer recurred, and we have high hopes he can beat it. Because he’s just that obstinate.