Sponsors (4)
Introduced June 12, 2025 by John Karl Fetterman · Last progress June 12, 2025
This bill substantially increases and indexes death and funeral payments to provide clearer, larger, and more timely support to survivors of federal employees and service members, at the cost of higher federal spending, new demands on agency budgets and administration, and some eligibility and oversight trade-offs.
Surviving family members of federal employees who die in the line of duty receive a new lump-sum $100,000 death gratuity (indexed for inflation), providing immediate, substantial financial support to families.
Funeral assistance for federal employee deaths increases to $8,800 for deaths on/after enactment and is automatically adjusted annually, helping families cover burial costs and preserving the benefit's real value over time.
Survivors of federal employees and service members get inflation-indexed death gratuities that cannot be reduced by other federal death payments (no offset), increasing net payments to bereaved families and preserving long-term value.
Higher and inflation-indexed gratuities, larger funeral payments, and potential emergency supplemental funding significantly increase federal outlays, creating budgetary pressure that could result in higher taxpayer costs or cuts elsewhere.
Agencies are required to fund gratuities from their own salaries-and-expenses appropriations, which can reduce funds available for programs, staffing, or services and complicate agency cash flow and operations.
The emergency funding pathway permits open-ended supplemental appropriations requests and gives agency/OMB discretion to trigger funds, which weakens congressional control over spending and risks unplanned increases in federal commitments.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Creates an indexed federal death gratuity (~$100,000), raises funeral pay to $8,800 (indexed), updates Foreign Service rules, adds emergency funding authority and GAO oversight.
Creates a permanent federal death gratuity for most federal employees who die from injuries sustained in the line of duty, sets the base amount at $100,000 (indexed annually for inflation), raises the flat funeral expense payment to $8,800 (also indexed), and clarifies beneficiary rules and payment priority. It updates Foreign Service death-payment rules to align with the new gratuity, adds a temporary emergency supplemental funding authority for agencies that cannot make required payments because of a disaster or incident, and requires agencies to notify the Comptroller General about gratuity payments with GAO reporting and an audit requirement.