Pallone pushes bill while 9/11 advocate waits

Pallone pushes bill while 9/11 advocate waits
Foundation wants permanent health benefits for responders
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6th District) said last week he continues to work toward a bill providing health care benefits for 9/11 responders while advocates keep up the pressure to make those benefits permanent.

Pallone said last week that he is still working on getting the James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act (HR-847) marked up, or moved out of committee, but is still short of the needed votes for the measure, which he said the White House does not support.

“I think I’m getting closer,” said Pallone, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health. “I’m trying to see if I can get the votes to keep the entitlement status, to keep the community program.”

According to Pallone, the bill is being held up because it makes the benefits an entitlement that must be funded permanently as opposed to the current practice of annually renewing them.

“We have to identify a way to pay for this,” he added. “There probably has to be some new tax of some sort. I’m trying to do these things as quickly as possible.”

Pallone said the White House does not support the bill but does support funding the program on a year-to-year basis.

“Every year, we seek funding through the appropriations process,” he said. “What the bill says is that the funding is mandatory.

“What the president is saying is that they don’t support mandatory spending,” he added. “They just want to continue supporting the funding every year.”

Some two weeks after organizing a rally in front of Pallone’s Long Branch office, John Feal said he is optimistic that the 9/11 health care bill will be marked up sooner rather than later. The founder of the FealGood Foundation, which advocates for 9/11 responders and those who worked or lived near the World Trade Center, said he is optimistic that the bill will make it out of committee to a floor vote in Congress in the coming month.

“I’ll tell you why I feel that way,” he said last week, “because November is coming quick, and every Democrat is worried about who is going to take their seat. I guarantee you someone is going to step up to the plate to make sure this bill gets done.”

According to its website, the foundation’s mission is to raise awareness and educate the public about the catastrophic health effects experienced by 9/11 first responders and to “relieve these great heroes of the financial burdens placed on them.”

Feal is urging Pallone to move the bill and has been critical of his seeming inability to get the bill to the floor of the Congress, claiming there is widespread support for the mark-up.

“This bill is going to get marked up,” he added. “I no longer have to speak to Congressman Pallone, because it’s out of his hands. The rest of the New York and New Jersey delegations want this bill marked up.”

The outspoken advocate said the bill has become a political issue, and he doesn’t think it should be.

“9/11 illnesses have no political party,” he said. “I worked with both sides of the aisle and I will continue to do so.

“We are eight and a half years later and no federal legislation; that’s a joke.”

Pallone said there is some support for making the program permanent but not the funding, which he does not support.

“If the money isn’t permanent, then it is not that different,” he said. “You could authorize the program, but someone would argue how significant that is if you can’t guarantee the money.

“Right now the program itself is on an ad hoc basis. I’m still going to try to get the entitlement status.

“I’d like to pass the bill with the entitlement status and not without it. These are the kinds of amendments that would weaken it.”

Feal, however, said the bill isn’t perfect but it should be passed now and changed later.

“There needs to be more illnesses added to the bill, and the area that the bill affects needs to be expanded,” he said.

“Those are amendments that can be made to the bill afterwards. Right now we just need to get the support.”

Feal gave some examples of how the bill could be improved.

“I’d like to see all cancers added to the bill,” he said. “I know 20-some-odd people with thyroid cancer, and if it came out today, then it wouldn’t be covered by the bill. Right now we have to get the bill through the house.”

Pallone said there are many diseases listed in the proposed bill and there is a way to add more.

“There is a list, and most of them are respiratory and cancers. And there is also a process where something new develops that wasn’t already identified, and that can be added as well,” he said. “I’m pretty sure various psychological disorders are covered.”

Feal also reacted to recent news that the proposed budget for 2011 allocates approximately $150 million for 9/11 responder health benefits, more than double the 2010 budget of some $70 million.

“What they did when they doubled our funding for 2011 was basically a PR stunt,” he said. “There is no long-term solution.

“What’s going to happen in 2012? We work every year on the budget, but with the bill there is no budget.”

Feal said the entitlement bill would be active for only the next 30 years.

“No 9/11 responder is going to be alive in 30 years,” he said.

Feal, a 9/11 responder who was injured and lost part of his foot as a result of working at ground zero, admitted to feeling a wide range of emotions.

“I’m optimistic — as an advocate, I have to be optimistic,” he said. “I’m angry, I’m sad, and I feel betrayed, but I’m not going to come out of character so they can demonize me. They call me a hero, and I’m not about to lose that.”

Contact Kenny Walter at

kwalter@gmnews.com.


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