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It’s beyond outrageous that once again the heroes of 9/11 have to beg Congress to renew full funding for the Zadroga Act treatment centers for workers who selflessly risked their lives and health at Ground Zero.
No one had to beg the first responders to rush to the scene of the 2001 terrorist attacks that toppled the Twin Towers; no one had to plead with the firefighters, police officers, emergency medical personnel, construction workers and others who labored for months in the toxic and hazardous environment in rescue, recovery and clean-up efforts that followed.
Many of these workers, predictably, were injured, and many more became ill with diseases brought on—sometimes years later—by their brave service. Although various programs compensated victims in the immediate aftermath, it became clear that much more was needed.
In the years that followed the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of workers have died including, most recently, Police Lt. Marci Simms, 51, who served for four months at Ground Zero and succumbed last week to lung cancer.
Yet Congress has not only allowed the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to expire, but some members of the House of Representatives led by Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte have tried to slip through a watered-down renewal bill that cuts funding and lasts for just five more years.
In fact, it was only in 2010 that a reluctant Congress even managed to pass the original Zadroga bill—named for a New York Police Department officer whose 2005 death from respiratory disease was the first in the NYPD attributed to exposure to toxic chemicals at Ground Zero. The bill named for him first had to overcome a Republican filibuster against it in the Senate, where some members feared creating a new “entitlement” program. It finally passed with the addition of a sunset clause in the form of a specific expiration date: Oct. 1, 2015.
Obviously, that date has come and gone. And money remaining in the program’s budget is expected to run out sometime next year.
But 9/11 workers with injuries and illnesses are still with us; many of them, unfortunately, will die for their service, and many others will be living for years with permanent disabilities and afflictions.
It’s time, therefore, for the Zadroga Act to be renewed, to be fully funded, and to be made permanent.
New York’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last Sunday, said that by failing to renew Zadroga funding and failing to make it permanent, the dithering members of Congress are “putting politics before people.”
“I think it’s a moral outrage that we are not standing by our first responders,” she said.
It is that, to be sure.
