When Congress approved billions of dollars in federal disaster aid Friday night to help countless Americans afflicted by the destruction of hurricanes, they outrageously left out countless Americans afflicted by the tragedy of the destruction of the World Trade Center who are suffering and dying from terrible illnesses caused by the toxic air at Ground Zero.
The fault lies with Elon Musk, who, in his rash meddling, blew up an agreed bipartisan plan to provide permanent comprehensive medical care to the sickened heroes and victims of 9/11.
So now the fight for funding to provide for these folks must continue when the new 119th Congress assembles next month.
The CDC’s WTC Health Program, first approved 14 years ago today, Dec. 22, 2010, as the final vote of the outgoing 111th Congress, is running low on funds. Unless there is more money, treatments for the responders and survivors will have to be rationed.
With the Musk-caused failure, the shortfall remains and the sick and dying firefighters suffering from cancers and other ailments who rushed in to save lives on that terrible day and in the days and weeks to follow will have to keep making the trek to Washington to implore Congress to pay for their medical care. How obscene.
Last week was supposed to be the end of this long struggle. These columns started to write extensively in 2006 about the horrible health impacts of the poisonous plume that rose when the towers fell, bringing attention to the growing health crisis. That effort was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, but Congress was slow, taking until the last hours of 2010. And sadly, the last hours of 2024, instead of full and permanent funding, ended with disappointment and nothing.
Andy Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association and Jim Brosi, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, were both in Washington Wednesday for a day of celebration.
Thanks to the hard work of New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer and Mike Braun of Indiana, teaming with Long Island Congressman Andrew Garbarino, who had successfully enlisted Speaker Mike Johnson, full funding for the WTC Health Program was at last at hand, part of the final spending bill of the year.
At 3 p.m. Wednesday, the two FDNY union leaders gathered in the speaker’s grand office with Garbarino and some other New York House Republicans whose support for Johnson’s speakership had helped win his backing for the WTC measure. There were handshakes and photos and Johnson spoke of his own late dad as a firefighter who had been disabled battling a blaze.
At 4 p.m., Ansbro and Brosi were then at the ceremony for the unveiling of a portrait of former House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, the New York congresswoman who had championed the WTC health cause for decades. The painting shows her wearing her FDNY turnout coat over a formal yellow gown. Maloney wore her bunker gear everywhere to remind people of the forgotten heroes who were still suffering and in need of help.
But by then, Musk’s attack on the spending plan was causing it to collapse, aided when Donald Trump threw in a nonsensical demand about the debt ceiling. The plan died.
When the substitute was passed on Friday, the WTC money was gone. The fight will go on in 2025.
