Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill I am introducing along with Senator Grassley called the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvement Act.

When our first responders make the decision to join a police department or a fire department or an EMT squad, they do so knowing they might encounter hazards on the job that threaten their lives or even end their lives. These men and women work in some of the highest pressure and most dangerous environments--shootouts, fires, natural disasters, terror attacks.

Think about your own communities back home. When disaster strikes, when there is an emergency, who shows up first, speeding to the scene and ready to help? It is our police officers, it is our firefighters, and it is our EMT workers. Our public safety officers know that death or serious injury is a real risk in their jobs, but they show up to work anyway, ready to help and willing to sacrifice, if that is what it takes to keep their communities safe.

When first responders die as a result of their work, we all have the responsibility to help take care of their surviving family members. In 1984, more than three decades ago, Congress did the right thing and created a program called the Public Safety Officers' Benefit Program to help these families.

Whenever a tragedy struck and a first responder was killed on the job or passed away because of their job, these grieving families could take a little bit of comfort in knowing they would have the financial support they needed with this program. They knew they would have help from this program, transitioning to a life without their loved one.

In recent years, the families applying to the program have faced confusing and inconsistent requirements. They have faced long delays in receiving compensation. Before, when a loved one died on the job, the family would get compensation from this program without any serious delay. But now the burden to claim these funds and then retrieve them has been placed on the families--the same families this program is supposed to be helping.

As a result, hundreds of families who are already grieving now have to dig through public records themselves. They have to endure an exhausting paper chase with no guidance. And they have to go far beyond a reasonable doubt to prove to the Justice Department that their loved one did, in fact, serve as a first responder and sacrificed his or her life for this job.

Last fall, USA Today reported that of the more than 900 cases they reviewed, the average wait for a decision by the program about compensation was more than 1 year. For some families, it was 2 years, and for some, the wait was 3 years. This even includes our first responders who worked at Ground Zero. Think about the unnecessary stress these delays have placed on our families who lost loved ones.

We know we must fix this program. We must fix this program. These families of our fallen public safety officers are not getting the compensation they deserve, that their loved ones have earned, in the timely manner they need.

This bill--Senator Grassley's and mine--is a bipartisan bill that fixes this problem. The Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvement Act would make this compensation program more transparent and more efficient, and it would make sure it works.

The bill would require the program to report publicly the status of every claim so that families can know if and why their compensation is being delayed. It would give weight to the findings and records of Federal agencies, State agencies, and local agencies about the cause of the public safety officer's death so that families don't have to reproduce records that already exist. And this bill would reduce the wait for our families to receive the compensation they deserve and desperately need.

I thank my colleague Senator Grassley for his strong leadership and his amazing advocacy, and I urge all my colleagues here to support this bill. Let's fix the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program. Let's take care of these families--the families of our public safety officers--and let's do the right thing.

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