Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022

I thank the Republican whip for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.

On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. and will recess shortly thereafter. At approximately 11 a.m., the House will meet in joint session with His Excellency Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic, Greece. Votes are expected in the House on Tuesday thereafter.

On Wednesday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for legislative business.

On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

The House will consider Chairman Scott's H.R. 7309, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2022, which is an important part of the Make It In America agenda. Now more than ever, businesses need skilled workers, and it is essential that we reauthorize WIOA to expand access to skills training for high-demand, high-wage jobs.

Mr. Speaker, the House will also consider H.R. 7688, the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, introduced by Representatives Kim Schrier and Katie Porter. This critical legislation seeks to give the Federal Trade Commission greater authority to rein in excessive gas prices. This bill would protect consumers against irresponsible actors in oil and gas who would artificially inflate prices for extra profit, and it will help Americans struggling with higher energy costs.

Mr. Speaker, the House will also consider two bills under suspension of the rules in recognition of National Police Week.

Mr. Speaker, 23,229 of our fellow citizens have lost their lives, over the course of the existence of our country, in law enforcement, in doing their duties and protecting us and protecting our property.

The first of those bills is H.R. 6943, the Public Safety Officer Support Act, bipartisan legislation that would expand eligibility for the Public Safety Officers' Benefit program to include stress and trauma-related injuries and death by suicide for law enforcement officers and their families.

Tragically, Mr. Speaker, that happens too often as a result of the trauma and stress which our police officers around the country confront.

The second bill is H.R. 2992, the TBI and PTSD Law Enforcement Training Act, again bipartisan legislation, Mr. Speaker, that would require the Department of Justice to develop crisis intervention training tools for law enforcement agencies so they can better equip officers to respond to individuals with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, some of the most dangerous confrontations that our officers have.

The House will also consider, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6531, the Targeting Resources to Communities in Need Act of 2022, sponsored by Jim Clyburn and Hal Rogers, the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. Unfortunately, that failed on suspension, so it is coming back under a rule.

We will also consider S. 2938, legislation to designate the United States Courthouse and Federal Building located at 111 North Adams Street in Tallahassee, Florida, as the Joseph Woodrow Hatchett United States Courthouse and Federal Building, which was sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican Member of the United States Senate.

The House will consider other bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspensions will be announced by the close of business today.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, we obviously will be ready at any time that the Senate can pass assistance to the extraordinary, brave, and courageous Ukrainians, who are confronting the Russian criminal invasion of their country unprovoked, unwarranted, and unjustified.

We will have that legislation as soon as it comes back here considered, hopefully, on this floor so that we can get some $40 billion in military and humanitarian assistance that is needed in Ukraine so critically.

It is a sad thing that we passed this bill Tuesday night, and it has been sitting in the Senate with essentially now one Senator, one Republican Senator, Mr. Paul of Kentucky, holding it up. I am hopeful that the Senate can move it over to us quickly.

We passed it in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion when it was here, so that is also a possibility, Mr. Speaker, to be on the floor next week.

Will the gentleman yield just on that point?

On just that point, the gentleman mentioned this the last time we had a colloquy and pointed out that the drilling and processing of petroleum products are the cleanest in the world. You made that point last week, and you have just made it now.

Does the gentleman know why that is the case?

Correct.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, we have had this discussion before. I am going to take a little bit of time to--because if you just listen to the Republican whip, you would think that America is bereft of production of oil, or of LNG, or of petroleum-based products.

I want to go through what America is doing, what the increase has been, and what can be done.

First of all, the United States is the largest producer of oil in the world--18.61 million barrels per day. Saudi Arabia is about half of that, at 10.8. Russia is slightly less than Saudi Arabia; Canada about half of what Russia is doing; China about half, a little less than half, of what Russia is doing. So, we are the largest producer of petroleum products.

We import some, and that is largely based on the type of petroleum products that we use. On crude oil we produced 11.6 million barrels in February 2022. The all-time high was 12.9, almost 13 million barrels.

When Trump took office, we produced 8.8 billion barrels in January 2017. In 2008, we produced 5 million barrels. We more than doubled that in a decade from that 5 million.

Oil production is up more than 700,000 billion barrels from January to December 2021. It is up. It is very substantially up. Oil production is projected to grow more than 1 million barrels this year alone.

The U.S. rig count--this is important because these are the rigs that are in operation. The U.S. rig count is at a current level of 705, up seven from a week ago, and 257 from 1 year ago--a 57 percent increase.

So the presentation that somehow we are handcuffed in producing petroleum products is simply not true. In terms of natural gas, the United States is also the largest producer of natural gas in the world, at 3 trillion--3.109 billion cubic feet. Russia is second, Iran is third, and China is fourth, and Qatar is fifth.

In December of 2011, Mr. Speaker, the U.S. was producing 82.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas. That was in 2011. In December 2021, we are now producing 118 billion cubic feet, a 45 percent increase in 10 years. Again, to hear the

whip talking about it, it would be as if we have been somewhat constrained and are not doing our job.

Now, I happen to have an export company in my district, Calvert Cliffs, a nuclear facility. Right south of Calvert Cliffs is an export facility for LNG, in Cove Point, Maryland. In October 2021, 66 percent of the deliveries went to Asia, 34 percent went to Europe.

In February and March of this year, it is now 80 percent to Europe and 20 percent to Asia.

Why is that? So that we can meet the cutoff that has either happened because Russia did it or it has happened because the Europeans have stopped buying, in some respects, Russian product.

In any event, at the end of 2021, the U.S. had a peak export capacity of 11.6 billion cubic feet per day. By the end of 2022, that figure is expected to increase by 20 percent. This is not a country that is locking down the production of oil.

In addition, let me point out that there are--I want to get the right figure--oil and gas companies already have 26 million acres of public lands to drill on and over 11 million acres of Federal waters that are currently at their disposal. They have 37 million acres in total. Nothing is stopping these companies from drilling there, if they choose to do so.

The industry, Mr. Speaker, holds 9,000 unused approved permits right now. There are 9,000 approved permits to drill, which they are not using.

Last fall, the Biden administration put 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for auction; unfortunately, the court overturned that. There has not been a pursuit of that, as the whip will point out, since that time. The point is that the response to that offer got a 2 percent response for 1.7 million acres out of the 80 million acres that were offered.

Now, the reason I took some time to go through these figures--nobody ought to be confused by the fact that what we are experiencing is a cause of the President's proper view that we need to move to alternative fuels, a proper view that we need to, as the whip has pointed out, have safe production, safe processing, energy efficient, but also environmentally sensitive production of our oil products. All of which we are doing.

I want to make it very clear that my personal view is we need to make sure that Europe has product, period, for national security reasons and, as the whip points out, for environmental reasons. There ought to be no confusion that oil production in this country is doing very well.

Now, why do some companies say they are not producing a lot? Because they are making a lot of money, a lot of profits, and buying back stock. That enhances the value of that stock. It enhances the value of the company. It enhances the value of the CEO. I don't criticize them for that.

Very frankly, we are at war. A dictator has invaded, without justification, a friendly country, Ukraine. They have fought back with extraordinary valor. What we really ought to do is talk together about how we can make sure that we bring gas prices down.

Now, whether the FTC decides--as the gentleman has pointed out, Mr. Speaker--whether or not there is gouging, if they don't decide that then, as Secretary Granholm observed, they are not sure, so be it. If they are gouging--if they are incorrectly charging consumers a higher price just because they can, then we ought to know about that.

That is what this bill is about, and that is going to be discussed next week. There ought to be no confusion, we are producing a lot of oil. We are producing a lot of LNG. We are trying to provide for our own needs and the needs of those who are confronting tyranny in Europe and are confronting shortages in Europe, which is driving up prices.

For the gentleman to say that these are Biden prices is simply not the case. Biden didn't have anything to do with these prices. We were producing more petroleum products. What happened is the cartels, which have done so--and I am old enough to remember what happened in the early 1970s--the cartels are controlling supply.

As a result, the shortness of supply and the increase in demand--why? Because we dealt with the pandemic. We got shots in arms. Once we got shots in arms and we are not wearing masks on the floor anymore, we are in better shape health-wise.

So what are people doing? They are going out and driving. Demand is up and supply is being kept down by the cartels, not by Joe Biden.

This evidence of the companies not producing more product--I get it. They are getting very high prices.

So why should they produce more product? If you produce more product and if you want to sell more product to make more money--but they are making a lot of money right now and they are buying stock back. The dividends are being paid at a healthy rate. So here we are.

Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman that we are going to deal with both the supply side, which is important, but I also want to make sure that we aren't gouging consumers in the process.

It is unfortunate that at a time of war that we spend all our time blaming our own President.

It is unfortunate that when the Europeans put themselves over the objections of numerous administrations in a place where they had dependence on Russia, Russia has no leverage over us. We don't need Russia for energy. As a matter of fact, we voted overwhelmingly to stop buying any petroleum products from Russia which I supported strongly. On this side of the aisle and on the other side of the aisle we supported that strongly.

The fact of the matter is the gentleman refuses to recognize 80 million acres--now, it was overturned by the courts later--80 million acres. He says all these people want to produce it and they want to look to new places, and they want to find oil someplace. There was a 2 percent of response.

Mr. Speaker, 1.7 million acres out of 80 million acres were bid on. That doesn't sound to me like a stampede to find it.

But let me tell you what he doesn't tell the American people, Mr. Speaker, when he is making that presentation. And you would think the Biden administration has clamped things down. The Biden administration approved more drilling permits in 2021 than the Trump administration approved in the first 3 years they were in office. Let me say that again: The Biden administration approved more permits in the first year of their term than the Trump administration did in the first 3 years of their term.

So when he says: Oh, the Biden administration is shutting it down and that is why we are having the problem; we are having the problem because Russia--the second, third producer of petroleum products in the world--is an irresponsible dictatorship run by one man, essentially, who wants to use petroleum products as leverage. And he had leverage on the Europeans, and he had leverage certainly on the Ukrainians. They used energy as a bludgeon.

In addition to that, the oil companies were making huge profits as these prices kept going up. So they didn't go out and do a lot of drilling. They didn't bid on a lot of new opportunities that maybe they could have produced oil on. They didn't bother.

Why?

Because they were making so much money. Now, that is a business judgment. But the effect of not doing it meant that as demand went up and less of a supply, not just from their actions but from the actions of the Saudis, others, and the cartel, again, three times as many permits were authorized in the first year of the Biden administration than 3 years in the Trump administration.

So don't tell me about Donald Trump and the free market. The free market is one reason why this is happening. I am for the free market because sound business judgments work: we are making a lot of money, with that money we are going to buy back stocks; it will make the remaining stocks more valuable; we are going to pay good dividends; our stock value is going to go up, and everybody is happy--except the consumer, of course, because supply on the world markets--and it is a world market price, it is not Biden's price, it is the world market price--have gone up because demand is up and supply is down.

So I don't know how the gentleman rationalizes his comments about Biden constricting petroleum production when the permits issued are three times--or said a different way--in 1 year three times the number of permits that Mr. Trump issued in the first 3 years of his term. I wish we would get off this and really focus on the enemy. I know there is a lot of politics here, but we are at war. We need to produce energy.

As I told my friend, Cove Point is now sending 80 percent, reversing Asia supply to European supply because they need it because we are at war. And we are up in almost every category of production of petroleum products. So we can go on and on and on about this. Rig counts that are producing oil are up 57 percent--57 percent from a year ago--a 57 percent increase in operating rigs. It doesn't sound to me like Biden is shutting people down.

Biden does want a clean environment. Biden does want us to look at alternative energy. That is what he was talking about in the campaign that he wanted to look to that. But President Biden has made it very clear he understands in the short term--short term could be 25 years or 5 years--in the short term, particularly during the course of this war, we need to have all the petroleum products, and we need to have them for ourselves and for our allies.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring to the majority leader the schedule for next week.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the House majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, as we look at some of the bills that will be brought up next week, in the price gouging bill, there are a number of concerns with the way it is not really defined in terms of what price gouging would even be. But as we know, the current state of our energy crisis is really because we, through the Biden administration, have shut down energy production in America.

In fact, just the other day, earlier this week, in the midst of dramatically high gas prices, President Biden announced that he is canceling massive oil and gas lease sales. In the Gulf of Mexico, where there are rich reserves of American energy that could be produced, and Alaska, where there are rich reserves of American energy that could be produced, President Biden said no yet again. And this isn't the first time.

In fact, since he became President, on day one, Joe Biden started attacking American energy. He killed not only the Keystone but the ability to produce and make any new pipelines in America to move energy around our country so that we don't have to import it from countries like Russia. President Biden made us dependent on Russian oil. In fact, he was begging Putin to send us more oil while he is canceling the ability for us to produce our own energy.

You have seen other steps that the President has taken all throughout his Presidency to make it almost impossible to produce American energy, to move American energy, to export American energy. LNG permits are sitting on the desk waiting to be signed for over a year, not a single new LNG export permit to help not just America lower our energy prices but to help our friends around the world, especially in Europe, not need to get energy from bad actors like Putin.

As Putin is, hopefully, going to be pushed to the side in terms of energy that we get, the President continues to turn not to American energy but to turn to other dictators, to go to Iran, to go to Venezuela, while shutting down American energy.

So, we have a bill, and I brought this up to the majority leader a number of times, H.R. 6858, with over 130 cosponsors, a bill that would actually open up American energy so that we can lower gas prices. We can actually do something about it, not try to point the finger and blame this person.

The President tried blaming Putin. Nobody in the country bought it because they knew gas prices were going up dramatically well before Putin invaded Ukraine. In fact, President Biden, by shutting down American energy, allowed Putin to make $700 million a day selling his oil to America and Europe, $700 million a day leading up to the war to help fund the war against Ukraine because President Biden said no to American energy over and over again. This bill would actually fix that.

Now, when you look at the price gouging bill, first of all, Secretary Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, was asked in a committee hearing recently, just about 2 weeks ago, if there was price gouging. She said: I am not sure anyone is saying there is wholesale gouging.

Now, if you read the bill, what we have seen of it so far, it doesn't allow the FTC to take action against the President of the United States, who actually is responsible for the gouging prices, high prices, whatever you want to define ``gouging'' as.

Again, the bill itself is very vague. If you just don't like a high price, you can go blame somebody else, or we could actually do something about it. We could actually bring a bill, like H.R. 6858, that would actually allow us to open up American energy that is here-- great technology, lowest carbon emissions in the world, by the way, as we are now forced to rely on energy from other countries that actually emit more carbon to produce their oil.

I would yield. Especially if the gentleman would tell me we are bringing this up on the floor, I would be happy to yield right now.

Because America has the best standards in the world.

America knows how to do it better.

By the way, it is American innovation that has opened up the ability to produce more energy cleaner than anyone else in the world, and the President of the United States is the one saying no to America. He is not saying no to all energy. He is saying no to the cleanest American energy. But then he is begging foreign countries, which actually produce energy without American standards, begging them to give us our oil at a much higher price than just doing it here in the best place to do it in the world.

It perplexes me why the President of the United States says no to American energy while begging dictators to give us our energy at a higher cost, but that is where we are.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, to say that Joe Biden is not the reason that supply is limited just doesn't match with the facts. Again, just 2 days ago, Joe Biden, not Putin, not the big oil companies, Joe Biden canceled oil and lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.

Joe Biden canceled lease sales in Alaska.

Joe Biden, as a candidate--this isn't just some new development for Joe Biden--Joe Biden as a candidate for President of the United States said: ``No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period.''

That was Joe Biden as a candidate, and he didn't stop there.

When he became President, on day one he started an attack on American energy. It is crystal clear why.

Now, I am glad the gentleman is bragging about high production levels, but let's not think for a minute that Joe Biden is the reason we have production today. If you understand the oil and gas industry--I was just on a rig in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico 2 weeks ago, one of the largest-producing rigs in the Gulf. Do you know that rig got its first lease in 2002? It took about 10 years to get the first oil. They put private money--all private money; over $10 billion of private money--into developing those leases. There were many leases and permits along the way to finally get to the point where they could bring oil out of the ground, making money to pay back the $10-plus billion, to ultimately get to a point where they could produce over 130,000 barrels today.

If Joe Biden wants to try to dare take credit for those 130,000 barrels today, he needs to go check the record at how long it took to get that oil from lease, permits, out of the ground, to ultimately getting it into world markets, not American markets. Oil companies don't set the price of oil, it is world markets. That oil ultimately depletes, which is why the oil companies are always looking for new opportunities.

The gentleman talks--as the White House has talked--about thousands of permits that are out there. It sounds really good. Understandably, I think people recognize it is a misleading number because many of these permits are for wells that were tried where there is no oil. There is not oil everywhere.

You buy leases to go explore. It is called ``exploration'' for a reason. If it was known reserves--if you go drill right under a gas tank you find oil. If you want to find oil out amongst the natural resources that leases are issued for, you do test wells, you do seismic engineering. By the way, that takes years to go through the process of permitting.

Since Joe Biden has been President they have not issued new leases for seismic. So you might have a 3-mile by 3-mile lease in the Gulf of Mexico that you paid millions of dollars to the Federal Government for years ago, and you are continuing to try to explore those 3 miles by 3 miles that the Federal Government was happy to take the money for, but you can't even get a permit from the Federal Government today to explore that lease--to exercise other permits.

You have to get permits for the pipelines. Not a single new pipeline permit has been issued. Even if you get it out of the ground, the Biden administration doesn't want you to have the ability to move it through to refineries and world markets.

What you see is a recognition by the rest of the world that America has

taken itself off the shelf in terms of the ability to produce energy. Again, Joe Biden is the one who canceled all these sales. Joe Biden is the one who, as a candidate, said there will be no drilling. Cartels love this policy because they know now they control the supply.

America is producing oil today based on permits and actions that were taken years ago. What we are seeing today is an inability to continue developing these leases, which means ultimately they will dry up, as all of those leases do. That is why you are always exploring for the next round of finds.

Those next rounds of finds are not being explored for in America, they are being explored for in other countries, but it is countries that are cartels, countries that are monopolies, so they can control the price.

It is interesting that the gentleman brought up the last time we saw these kinds of prices was in the 1970s under a similar Democrat President who had the same kind of attitude toward American energy. It made our country dependent on foreign energy and it created lines at the pump where people had to wait days to get gasoline.

When you saw President Trump opening up American energy and allowing a free market to produce energy--we don't put those constraints in place when we are operating under a free market, so the cartels have no leverage, Putin has no leverage. The only reason he has leverage is if you have a President like Joe Biden who says we are not going to produce in America.

He said it. He took the actions to follow up on it, including just a few days ago. Amidst high gas prices, he actually took more American energy off the market, giving the cartels more monopoly power to raise prices. I wish we would address that. We have a bill to address that and reverse those bad policies. Unfortunately, I haven't heard the gentleman commit to bringing those to the floor yet.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

So I wish my friend would address that. We have a bill to address that and reverse those bad policies. Unfortunately, I haven't heard the gentleman bring it to the floor yet.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

We will continue this discussion. I would like to see us bring up the bill that would actually address it. We will see this debate go on next week and beyond.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6943) to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to authorize public safety officer death benefits to officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022 is another bipartisan bill that would expand eligibility for public safety officers' benefits to include stress and trauma-related injuries and death by suicide for law enforcement officers and their families.

According to research from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, public safety officers are 25 times more likely to develop acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or other mental health conditions than the general public. They have a tough job.

Studies have shown that law enforcement officers could experience more traumatic events in 6 months than the average person will experience in a lifetime.

The Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program, known as PSOB, provides death and education benefits to survivors of fallen law enforcement officers, firefighters, and other first responders, as well as disability benefits to officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty.

Currently, this law excludes from eligibility families of officers who die by suicide and does not deem PTSD and other trauma-related disorders to be line-of-duty injuries.

This limitation not only fails to recognize that mental health is physical health, but it also prevents the Federal Government from providing support to officers who put their safety and well-being on the line every day for the communities they serve.

Former Representative Patrick Kennedy passed a bill to make mental health and physical health parity. He worked with Senator Ted Kennedy to get that done. Why law enforcement wasn't included was a mistake. We are rectifying that mistake today.

The Public Safety Officer Support Act would right past wrongs and ensure that families of police officers and first responders receive critical financial assistance as they grieve the loss of their loved ones.

It would also ensure that officers who are disabled as a result of traumatic events receive the support and care that they need.

This legislation also brings this program into alignment with the provisions of Federal military death benefits for the families of military servicemembers who die by suicide.

The need for this worthy and overdue change is even more apparent as we continue to grieve the tragic loss of four police officers who died by suicide after responding to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

They tried to defend us; they did defend us; and they, unfortunately, died by suicide as aftermath effects of January 6.

In addition to expanding eligibility for death and disability benefits to officers and their families, this bill will require the GAO to study benefits provided under the expansion.

This report will help us better understand the prevalence of traumatic events that law enforcement officers, first responders, and other public safety officers face and the need to further support their mental health needs.

I thank Representatives Trone and Reschenthaler for introducing this bipartisan legislation and for their continued support for public safety officers serving communities across the country.

This bill is broadly supported by both mental health and law enforcement groups, and I urge my colleagues to support it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Trone), the sponsor of this legislation and a gentleman aware of law enforcement's importance.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Craig), former ace Commercial Appeal reporter and now Congresswoman from the State of Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, I want everyone to vote in favor of this legislation and not to go to the extraordinary efforts of having to have the yeas and nays, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6943, the bipartisan Public Safety Officer Support Act, which would expand the Public Safety Officer Benefits Program to include death benefits for the families of officers who die by suicide, and disability benefits for officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma related disorders.

During Police Week, as we honor the men and women of law enforcement agencies who serve across the country, we must fully consider the sacrifices officers make and the risks they take to keep our communities safe.

Officers who dedicate their careers to our safety do so at the expense of spending long hours away from their families, while subjecting themselves to traumatic events, and in too many instances, making the ultimate sacrifice.

The Public Safety Officer Benefits program is an important initiative within the Department of Justice that provides financial support to officers, who are injured while serving their communities in the line of duty, and to families of officers killed in the line of duty.

In 2017, the Department of Justice approved 481 PSOB claims, but not a single claim for the over 240 public safety officers who died by suicide.

Unfortunately, the PSOB program does not currently cover injury or death caused by trauma and/or mental illness, although public safety officers are disproportionately exposed to traumatic events.

Research shows that law enforcement officers are called to the scene of roughly 140 traumatic incidents over the course of their careers.

The resulting rates of PTSD and depression among police officers and firefighters are unsurprisingly five times higher than among the civilian population.

While we have known for some time that law enforcement officers are more likely to die by suicide than by traffic accidents and shootings combined, officer suicides have increased over the last two years.

Sadly, several examples come to mind, including Amanda Crowder, a Harris County Deputy with the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston, who died in January after shooting herself; two deputies in St. Lucie County, Florida, who both died by suicide days apart, leaving behind their one-month-old son; and four police officers, of the Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Departments, who died by suicide after fighting valiantly to protect members of Congress and preserve the rule of law on January 6, 2021.

The families of the officers who died by suicide following the January 6th attack are likely barred from receiving any benefit from the PSOB program under current law.

The failure to provide PSOB benefits to deserving officers and their families under such circumstances is a deeply troubling limitation on federal support for first responders and their families that must be rectified.

And it is drastically different from the United States' military policy, where suicides are presumed to be line-of-duty deaths caused by post-traumatic stress, brain injuries, and other deployment hazards.

Now is the time for the Federal government to similarly support public safety officers suffering from trauma-related injuries and their families.

Expansion of the PSOB program would provide crucial financial support to officers and families grieving the devastating loss of a loved one, following a line of duty injury caused by trauma.

H.R. 6943 would correct a historic wrong by recognizing the impact of PTSD and other stress disorders on our public safety officers and expanding the eligibility of the PSOB program to include trauma-related injuries and death by suicide.

I thank Representatives David Trone and Guy Reschenthaler for introducing this thoughtful, bipartisan legislation and I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this week is National Police Week, a week we set aside to honor the brave men and women who tirelessly work to protect us and keep our communities safe.

Unfortunately, their jobs are becoming more and more difficult, more and more stressful, and as a result, they need our support now more than ever.

Over the last 2 years, violent crime in this Nation has soared. Nationally, we saw a 30 percent increase in murders from 2019 to 2020, which is the largest increase during a single year in our Nation's history.

That troubling trend continues in 2021 with FBI data indicating that homicides rose another 5 percent in the Nation's 22 largest cities over the already inflated levels of 2020.

Overall, in those 22 cities, homicides are up 44 percent since 2019. Think of that--44 percent. Not surprisingly, these disturbing increases have accompanied calls in many cities, including in my hometown of Cincinnati, to defund the police. Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, that is the last thing that we should be doing during a violent crime surge.

That is why the legislation that we are considering today is a welcome bipartisan step in the right direction.

Law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel, and corrections officers are frequently called to respond to dangerous and often traumatic situations. As a result, these officers are at a greater risk of developing stress and trauma-related disorders.

Studies show that public safety officers are 25 times more likely to develop PTSD compared to the general public. Tragically, more public safety officers die by suicide every year than those who lose their lives in the line of duty.

Yet, trauma-related disorders are not covered by the primary Federal disability benefits program for police officers, and that is the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program, or PSOB, which is run by the Department of Justice.

The PSOB program currently provides death and education benefits to the family members of public safety officers who die in the line of duty and also offers disability benefits to public safety officers who become totally and permanently disabled.

However, the PSOB program does not currently offer death benefits to public safety officers who tragically take their lives as a result of PTSD, acute stress disorder, or other stress and trauma-related disorders.

This bill, H.R. 6943, the Public Safety Officer Support Act, addresses this oversight. This bipartisan legislation recognizes just how stressful and difficult being a police officer is nowadays. It makes sure that those officers who have experienced traumatic events on the job, and are struggling as a result, receive the support they need and deserve.

The men and women in law enforcement need to know that they have our full support and that they will not be punished or stigmatized for human emotions.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this commonsense, compassionate proposal, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.