Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Chairman Grassley's Statement on "The Need for More Timeliness and Transparency: Oversight of the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program"

Hearing

In 1976, Congress passed the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Act. The goal of this law was to
provide death benefits to survivors of officers who die in the line of duty. Over the years, the
law has been amended to provide disability and education benefits, and to expand the pool of
officers who are eligible for these benefits.

Looking at the 40-year history of this law, the overall intent of Congress is clear. Men and
women who dedicate their lives to protecting our communities deserve honor and respect. That
means they deserve a fair and timely consideration of their application for Public Safety
Officers' Benefits -- or PSOB.

Families of fallen officers should not have to wait years in limbo, because bureaucrats in the
Justice Department can't get the job done on time. These are real people, who have suffered real
loss. If we were in their situation, we would want an answer too--YES or NO. Not years of
uncertainty and waiting.

The public understands that. Lawmakers understand that. And Attorney General Ashcroft
understood that. In 2004, he ordered that all PSOB claims should be processed within 90 days of
receiving the application and supporting documents. That seems like a reasonable goal.

However, in 2009, the Government Accountability Office found that PSOB was not even
tracking whether they met that 90-day goal. Five years after the Attorney General had ordered it,
the bureaucrats weren't even checking to see if they complied. A 2008 Inspector General found
the same thing. Apparently, lawyers reviewing PSOB claims were asking for the same
information over and over. They had no established timelines standards for conducting its
reviews. So, both GAO and OIG recommended correcting these problems, and DOJ agreed to
implement them. DOJ even established a new performance goal: to process PSOB claims within
1 year of filing.

However, in the five years immediately following that OIG audit, DOJ failed to meet this goal
27% of the time. In other words, from 2008 to 2013, more than one in four PSOB claims took
more than a year to process.

In January 2015, I began writing oversight letters to DOJ after constituents informed me that
families in Iowa had been waiting for more than 3 years for DOJ to decide their death benefit
claims. Since then, I have been writing regularly to get status updates on all pending claims at
PSOB.

What I have found is troubling

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