Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Senate has unanimously passed a bill entitled Protecting America's First Responders Act. I authored this legislation to expand benefits to first responders who are injured in the line of duty. The Public Safety Officers' Benefit Program, or PSOB for short, offers a one-time lump sum payment to first responders who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty. I think that legislation has been on the books since the 1970s. I started investigating this program when I heard complaints about long delays in processing payments. Those delays reached up to 3 years, on average. It is just not understandable why it should take 3 years for somebody who is killed in the line of duty to decide if the family should have help from that program. We fixed that particular issue with my 2017 bill entitled the Public Safety Officers' Benefit Improvement Act. However, my investigation uncovered a lot of other problems with that program, now 50 years old. The Justice Department was denying payments to folks who should have received those payments. In one case, a disabled police officer suffered a traumatic brain injury. The Department said that he wasn't disabled because he held a part-time position at Home Depot as a greeter. In another case, again, a police officer with brain injury was denied the benefit. Why? Because the officer tinkered around with motorcycles in his garage.…”