Volunteer Responder Incentive Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I wish to introduce the Volunteer Responder Incentive Protection Act with my friend and colleague from Maryland, Senator Cardin, which will benefit the brave women and men who volunteer at our local firehouses.

Across our Nation, volunteer firefighters play a critical role in helping to ensure the safety of our communities and the well-being of our neighbors. The State of Maine, for example, has approximately 9,785 firefighters who serve the State's 1.3 million citizens. Maine is largely a rural State, and more than 90 percent of firefighters are volunteers. Without these public-spirited citizens, many smaller communities would be unable to provide firefighting and other emergency services at all.

Often, communities seek to recruit and retain volunteers by offering modest benefits. The legislation we are introducing today would support these efforts by helping to ensure that these nominal benefits to volunteers are not treated as regular employee compensation.

The Volunteer Responder Incentive Protection Act would allow communities to provide volunteer firefighters and Emergency Medical Service, or EMS workers, with up to $600 per year of property tax reductions or other incentives, without those benefits being subject to Federal income tax and withholding. This would ease the administrative burden that local departments sometimes face when they reward their volunteers.

We should take care to protect our volunteer firefighters who serve this country with such bravery. Our legislation would help us achieve that goal, and I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting this bill.

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