W000090
Tuesday, November 06, 2001 11:20 AM
HR 2926 - Regulations - Compensation for Victims of Sept. 11
Terrorism
As someone who has made several donations to various charities for compensation of the victims, I am extremely concerned and STRONGLY OPPOSED to regulations that would reduce awards under HR 2926 by the amount of relief received by victim's families from charitable donations. The money given by me to charities was given free and clear to the victims - it was not intended to get the government or anyone else off the hook.
I have volunteered my time to work as a facilitator for the families of victims. Many, as you know, do not even have a body to bury.
Those families that would be hurt the most by "collateral source" regulations broad enough to capture charitable donations would be those at the bottom of the economic heap - people without a safety net who have little in the way of savings or other resources. These people (the families of the victims earning the least amount of money) will be unfairly penalized by a regulation cutting their compensation because they accepted charitable aid. In truth, there is no way we can "compensate" the family of a victim - the children who have lost or who will never know their father or mother, the spouses who are suddenly single parents or alone. I donated money with the intent of helping these people to hopefully be "more than whole" financially to make up for their unmeasurable personal loss. Do you really think that it is enough for the family of a soldier killed in the Pentagon to get compensation amounting to even of lifetime of his meager military salary? How about a dishwasher at Windows on the World earning $6 an hour, or a firefighter earing $28,000 a year? Wouldn't it be appropriate if the generosity of individual Americans could allow those victim's families to get a little more than they would otherwise be entitled to? Isn't that what our charity was all about?
I have no problem with including government benefits (such as social security survivor benefits) in the definition of collateral sources. There is no need for the government to pay twice. The law also specifies that life insurance, pension funds, death benefit programs and payments by Federal, State or local governments be considered deductible payments from a "collateral source". This is as far as the regulations should go. The charitable donations made by millions of Americans, in the best spirit of this country, should not be fair game and should NOT be considered payments from a "collateral source."
I trust that I can count on Attorney General Ashcroft to do the right thing.
Individual Comment