[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 90 (Monday, July 8, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 FEDERAL BILL TO MAKE SURVIVOR BENEFITS TO ALL BENEFICIARIES OF SLAIN 
                   LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS TAX FREE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, July 8, 2002

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to make 
benefits received by the beneficiaries (who are not a spouse or child) 
of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty tax-free. My 
bill amends the Officer Brian Gibson Tax Free Pension Equity Act that I 
introduced in 1997 after a District of Columbia police officer was 
killed in Ward 4, to relieve the spouses and children of law 
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty from taxation on death 
benefits. The law now applies to all law enforcement officers in the 
United States. I wrote the bill after I discovered that officers 
received disability benefits tax-free while the death benefits of 
survivors were taxed. I decided to amend my bill after the Mychal Judge 
Police and Fire Chaplains Public Safety Officers' Benefit Act of 2002, 
allowing domestic partners to receive Federal death benefits, was 
enacted and signed by the President last month. That bill was 
stimulated by September 11th and the discovery that the domestic 
partners of police and fire officers killed in the Twin Towers tragedy 
were being denied death benefits.
  The bill I introduce today is the logical companion bill to the 9-11 
public safety officers bill that is now law because it simply allows 
the same exemption from taxation that other beneficiaries will now 
receive. Without this new bill, the very inequity Congress clearly 
intended to eliminate between the spouses and relatives of slain 
officers on the one hand and other beneficiaries on the other would be 
reintroduced. If the death benefits of these beneficiaries of slain 
officers are tax exempt, it follows that the same benefits to other 
congressionally recognized beneficiaries should be similarly exempt. I 
believe that this remaining difference was not deliberate, but resulted 
from the fact that my earlier bill amended the tax code and was not 
immediately apparent to the authors of the recent bill.
  I ask all of my colleagues to support this corrective measure.

                          ____________________