"Congress Actually Dealt with Climate Change in the 2016 Budget Bill"

"It flew under the radar, but the approval of a new flood standard for federal projects means the federal government took a big step."

"President Obama's plan to safeguard the nation from increasing flood risk due to climate change was quietly green-lighted by Congress last month in the 2016 omnibus budget bill.

It marks one of the only actions Congress took on global warming in all of 2015, and it came as a surprise considering the longstanding opposition from Republicans. And it is a critical one, several policy experts said. It will impact billions of dollars of federally funded construction projects across the country, from highways and bridges to hospitals and housing complexes, at a time when flooding in the U.S. is getting worse every year because of climate change.

"The policy illustrates the awareness that we should not build things that are vulnerable to flooding now or in the future," said Rob Moore, a policy analyst and director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Water and Climate Team. "That may not seem like a revolutionary idea, but unfortunately it is. We have a long history of building things that easily get soggy.""

Katherine Bagley reports for InsideClimate News January 19, 2016.