Ask Bill for the $4M
Mnuchin: City’s fault 9/11 heroes took hit
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has a message for ailing 9-11 city firefighters whose funding his agency has withheld: We’re not giving your money back — go ask NYC.
For years, the U.S. Treasury Department has withheld nearly $4 million from the FDNY’s World Trade Center Health Program to satisfy still-unexplained debts that other, unrelated city agencies have with the feds.
Mnuchin sent a letter to Mayor de Blasio on Thursday saying that the city should make up the shortfall. And if the city doesn’t pay up, Mnuchin threatened to take other federal healthcare funding meant for New York, and give that to the fire department instead.
“We agree it is unfair to burden FDNY with delinquent debts of other NYC government entities. The city government should directly reimburse FDNY,” Mnuchin wrote.
And if de Blasio refuses, Mnuchin said the Treasury, together with the Department of Health and Human Services, “will facilitate offsets against future federal payments owed to NYC, which would permit the release of funds to FDNY as such substitute offsets are made.”
“Treasury needs to stop double-talking and pay up. This is their fault and they need to fix it, now. Enough already,” fumed Angelo Roefaro, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The Treasury secretary’s hardball offer is an unexpected turn in a convoluted tale.
According to federal law, when a federal agency can’t collect a debt, it refers the debt to the Treasury Department and something called the Treasury Offset Program, which then skims it off of future federal payments to the debtor.
The treatment program’s money got vacuumed up in that because it is under the same tax ID as the rest of the city government.
But the law, written in part by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in 1994, has a loophole that says Mnuchin can exempt offsets if they would harm a program that Congress wants to be funded, such as the 9-11 treatment program.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) first began asking about the missing cash early this year, and made it formal with a pointed letter back in June when Treasury failed to find a solution.
Asked about Mnuchin’s hardline stance Friday, Maloney again pointed back to the law she helped write.
“It is absurd that Secretary Mnuchin hasn’t yet taken action to rectify the problem,” Maloney said. “The Debt Collection Improvement Act ... clearly gives the Secretary and his department the ability and discretion to make sure that this program is made whole. He needs to stop playing games with these heroes’ lives.”
FDNY Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Prezant, who runs the treatment program, has told the News that he was able to function despite the dunning because the city and Fire Department could afford to front the missing money.
But with the coronavirus emergency and U.S. Senate’s failure to pass more COVID relief legislation, the cupboard is bare.