SHAME ON POLS!
9/11 vics must beg for funds — again
The answer no one in Washington could provide Monday was why Congress can’t just pass the law that would finally take care of the men and women who ran toward the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
But that was the question on the minds of dozens of responders and people sickened in communities around Ground Zero who arrived on Capitol Hill to pass a new 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. It would permanently replenish the one that is cutting payouts by 50% and 70% now, and expires in 2020.
“I don’t know why we’re back here, to be honest with you,” said Joe Zadroga, whose NYPD detective son’s death in 2006 was the first linked to 9/11 after the attacks. Two 9/11 health and compensation acts have been passed in his name.
The last one made the health care permanent. One unveiled Monday would make the compensation fund last until 2090 so that thousands of responders and other victims who are only getting sick and dying now will also have some protection.
“I would think that this would be a gimme, that (Congress) would understand that these people are sick, that these people need money, that these people have to be taken care of,” Zadroga said. “I don’t know why we’re here.”
Yet, dozens of responders and others sickened by exposure to the toxins of 9/11 fanned out across both chambers of Congress with mixed results.
Most members of Congress left meetings with the responders to aides, who were mostly noncommittal, the responders told the Daily News. If they had a question, it was usually about money, former Firefighter Rob Serra heard.
“Once they go to money — who’s paying for it, how’s it going to get paid for — that’s frustrating because we just finished telling him there’s 10,000 people with cancer,” said Serra, who uses a wheelchair that was used by a firefighter to lobby Congress four years ago, and has since died of his cancer.
“Nobody was thinking about money (on Sept. 11),” Serra said. “Money is not good enough answer.”
The reason responders are in Washington again was clear to them, even those sick themselves.
Former NYPD Detective Lou Alvarez traveled to D.C. after finishing his 63rd chemotherapy treatment Friday. He said he feels “blessed” because he got his pension and a payout from the old fund. But he wants to make the case for others.
“There’s people who don’t have a pension, who are too sick to work, who don’t have insurance now. This is money that they need for their families now,” Alvarez said. “If I go, my wife and three boys are going to be OK. That’s a stress that I don’t have,” he said. “When you’re fighting cancer, the last thing you want to worry about is money.”
The former host of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart, also lobbied lawmakers.
He called it “baffling” that lawmakers won’t just pass the new bill. He blamed a specific “impediment” — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who sets the schedule for bills in the Senate.
“Mitch McConnell has made this a problem. Only him. And I put the blame and the onus on him because he could fix it tomorrow,” Stewart said, remembering that the 2015 Zadroga Act ran afoul of various legislative horse trading that McConnell had a hand in. “If tomorrow he said let’s do this as a clean bill ... this would be done. And none of these people would have to be here.”
A spokesman for McConnell simply pointed to the fact that Zadroga did pass in the end, and Stewart at the time expressed gratitude.
McConnell’s Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.), vowed the new compensation act will get its vote.
“We were able to get upor-down votes before. We will get one now,” Schumer said.
“Everyone in the Senate should stand on notice. They’re going to have to say yes or no.”