With Congress preparing this month to adjourn for the year, advocacy groups are increasing their calls for lawmakers to renew a healthcare and victims compensation program that serves those who were injured responding to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The program’s congressional authorization expired in September but has enough money to keep operating until February or later, according to estimates.
The Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act enjoys broad support on Capitol Hill. A measure to renew the program and make it permanent is co-sponsored by a majorities in both the House and Senate.
In September, comedian Jon Stewart personally lobbied Congress to extend the program, telling reporters he was “embarrassed” that first responders “have to come down here and convince people to do what’s right for the illnesses and difficulties that you suffered because of your heroism and your selflessness.”
Lawmakers told the Washington Examiner they intend to renew it in the coming weeks.
“It has enough money to go to February,” Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “But we are going to get that done this year.”
Quick passage of the bill has been slowed by a disagreement among lawmakers about how long to renew the program and at what cost.
The original authorization, passed in 2010 at a cost of $4 billion, included a five-year sunset that was aimed at allowing for a careful review for fraud and abuse.
The bill is named after James Zadroga, a New York City Police officer who died from a respiratory illness directly related to his work at Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center fell, in the weeks following the attack.
Many lawmakers want to permanently extend at least the healthcare portion of the program, while others want to limit it to a 10-year extension. There is also disagreement over whether to make permanent the program’s victims compensation fund, which pays for pain and suffering and provides money if victims can no longer work because of an injury related to their response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
More than 4,500 first responders have a cancer related to their work at Ground Zero, said John Feal, who runs Fealgood Foundation, which assists emergency workers hurt in the line of duty.
The collapsed Trade Center buildings produced tons of caustic dust that remained in the air for months after the attack and the clean-up process was hazardous.
Feal’s foot was crushed by a giant piece of steel at Ground Zero, where he served as a demolition supervisor.
Feal and other first responders walked the halls of Congress the first week of December, calling on lawmakers to renew the program.
“There is a cloud of uncertainty in the Sept. 11 community that Congress could easily undo by getting this done as fast as possible,” Feal told the Examiner.
