Bill Pascrell: “I want to thank Mr. Reichert for all the work he has done on this legislation to bring it to the floor this evening. We…”

“I want to thank Mr. Reichert for all the work he has done on this legislation to bring it to the floor this evening. We are talking about H.R. 2146. Law enforcement officers face physically demanding work day in and day out. Current law recognizes this by making Federal law enforcement officers and firefighters eligible to retire after 20 years and at age 50. By the way, if I may say something on this, Mr. Speaker, I don't particularly like this idea because it is a way to get rid of experienced police officers throughout the United States of America. If you dump on them the fact that what we are going to do is we are going to play games with their pension funds, you force even more out. We are not saving any money, and we are not saving any time when we push the most experienced officers off the payroll. A flaw in the system makes it impossible for many of these retirees to access their earned benefits in their fifties. Most Federal employees--we are talking about Federal here--receive retirement benefits through the Federal Employees Retirement System. This three- part system is made up of a defined pension plan, a defined TSP contribution plan, and Social Security. However, although Federal law enforcement officers can retire at 50 and access two-thirds of their retirement benefits, they face a 10 percent tax penalty if they withdraw from the defined contribution plans like TSP before the age of 59\1/2\.…”