NAPO issued a letter of support to the House of Representatives for the Fuel the Force Act, H.R. 7210, which would provide $100,000 in annual federal income tax exclusion to full-time federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who remain on the job for 5 years or more. The Fuel the Force Act would play a vital role in ending the recruitment and retention crisis for agencies nationwide.

After the Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law Jan. 5, 2025, it marked NAPO’s decades of tireless advocacy to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). The WEP and GPO had been taking away hard-earned and much needed benefits from public safety officers for almost 40 years. In 2025, Social Security benefits were fully restored, and public safety retirees received a refund payment for the entire year of 2024. Now public safety retirees are facing a large tax bill on those lump sum payments, so NAPO worked with Congressman Lance Gooden (R-TX) on the No Tax on Restored Benefits Act, which would exclude the 2024 lump sum payment from federal income taxes. This bill honors Congress’s intent in repealing the GPO and WEP and would ensure public servants are no longer penalized for choosing a life of public service. NAPO sent a letter of support to Rep. Gooden.

The Homes for Every Local Protector, Educator, and Responder (HELPER) Act is a legislative priority for NAPO as it establishes a first-time homebuyer program through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to provide mortgage assistance to law enforcement officers, firefighters, other first responders and teachers. Qualified individuals would be eligible for a mortgage on a primary family residence with no down payment and no monthly mortgage insurance premium. NAPO met with the staff of the bill’s sponsors, Senators Ashley Moody (R-FL), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Representative John Rutherford (R-FL), to discuss our efforts to get the bill signed into law in 2026. NAPO is working to educate Committee members about the bill, what it does and why it is so necessary, and continues to build bipartisan support in the House and Senate. 

NAPO met with the staff of Representative Scott Peters (D-CA) to discuss the Providing Child Care for Police Officers Act. Representatives Peters and David Valadao (R-CA) are co-sponsors of the bill, which would create a grant program to help law enforcement agencies establish childcare centers to accommodate their non-standard hours. This would lift barriers for parents seeking employment or already employed by law enforcement agencies. San Diego Police Officers Association, a NAPO member organization, created the first such childcare center in the nation, showing that easing the complications of childcare allowed their officers to perform better in their jobs.

The Blue Alert Advisory Group, of which NAPO is an original member, and the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office, convened Jan. 29th to discuss the Network’s continued work to establish Blue Alert systems in all 50 states. Washington, D.C. and these 11 states do not have Blue Alert networks: Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. National Blue Alert Network is part of the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act, which works efficiently and effectively to protect officers from harm. The Act was named after NAPO members and NYPD Officers Ramos and Liu, who were assassinated while sitting in their police cruiser on Dec. 20, 2014. 

For more information on these and other legislative issues, please click here for the Feb. 6, 2026 Washington Report.