Consumer Law

The 9/11 Political Football Makes a Field Goal

By Joe Consumer

But no touchdown yet.  Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed a bill to aid sick 9/11 clean up workers who selflessly devoted days, weeks and months on the pile at Ground Zero ? and are dying for it.

Formerly heroes to the entire nation, many in Congress no longer want to help them, like Representative Joe L. ?You Lie? Barton (R-TX), who objects to this new ?entitlement program.?  So it passed 268 to 160, with 157 Republicans and three Democrats still opposing it.

The bill is called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, named for a New York City detective who died after working on the pit.  The New York Times described the bill this way:

The bill calls for providing $3.2 billion over the next eight years to monitor and treat injuries stemming from exposure to toxic dust and debris at ground zero. New York City would pay 10 percent of those health costs. The bill seeks to set aside $4.2 billion to reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to provide compensation for any job and economic losses.

In addition, the bill includes a provision that would have allowed money from the Victim Compensation Fund to be paid out to anyone who receives payment under the pending settlement stemming from lawsuits that 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers filed against the city. At the moment, anyone who receives a settlement from the city is limited in how much compensation they can receive from the fund, according to the bill?s sponsors.

You may recall that when this came up for a vote in July, it failed.  (See John Stewart?s take here.)  The House leadership was forced to use a rules maneuver requiring a two-thirds vote to pass, in order to keep conservatives from tacking on ?poison pill? amendments to kill it.  But the conservatives never let up.  As the New York Daily News wrote earlier this month:

The issue is that Democrats still fear that Republicans will add a measure to exclude illegal immigrants from any 9/11 bill. Although some undocumented immigrants likely worked on The Pile, and are now sick, leaders worry that conservative Democrats could be forced to take an immigration vote before the elections, and could side with the GOP.

Then the whole thing could unravel, they worry, because Democratic immigrant advocates may oppose a bill that excludes the relatively small number of people who answered the call to help after 9/11, but were not here legally.

Of course. Republicans could clear it all up, and pledge not to add poison pills to the bill ? a move Minority Leader John Boehner refused to make last week, even after Mayor Bloomberg and Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) asked him.

Guess Boehner finally agreed to back off, allowing for the straight up and down vote.  Whatta hero!

As far as the Senate, however, its fate is considered ?unclear.? Republicans have enough votes to filibuster the measure, and Senate Democrats have not shown great interest in bringing the measure to the floor.?

If it doesn?t pass, there is an important back-up in the works - a $713 million class action settlement covering workers, who must accept or reject the deal by November 8th. Although a much smaller amount than what Congress would like to give them, at least it?s something.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on September 30, 2010 (boomark / email).