9/11 responders hope for passage of aid bill

9/11 responders hope for passage of aid bill
House fails to pass James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — Former 9/11 first responder John Feal has promised to fill Washington with his fellow 9/11 brethren when Congress reconvenes this fall.

Feal’s promise comes a week after the $7.4 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act (H.R. 847), which would secure health care benefits for 9/11 first responders, was defeated in the House.

“To ensure they do the right thing, I will do another rally in D.C. and I will bring 9/11 survivors from the tri-state area and all over the country,” he said. “I will put them on the Capital and I will make sure that Congress does the right thing in the name of all 9/11 survivors.”

Feal has organized rallies in Long Branch, New York and Washington, D.C., to build support for the bill.

Currently, 9/11 responders receive free health care, but funding is discretionary from year to year. Under the proposed bill, funding would be permanent and responders would receive health care for life.

Congressman Frank Pallone (D-6th District), a co-sponsor of the legislation, explained the bill in a previous interview.

“H.R. 847 would establish the World Trade Center Health Program, a permanent program to screen, monitor and treat eligible responders and survivors who are suffering from World Trade Center-related diseases,” he said. “It would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct and support research into new conditions that may be related to the attacks and to evaluate different and emerging methods of diagnosis and treatment.

“Also, the legislation would build upon the expertise of the Centers of Excellence, which are currently providing high-quality care to thousands of responders and survivors, ensuring ongoing data collection and analysis to evaluate health risks.”

The bill was voted on by the House during a suspension vote, meaning that no amendments could have been added to the bill, but it needed a two-thirds vote to pass.

Pallone has been maneuvering to avoid having amendments attached to the bill that would weaken the bill with provisions such as excluding illegal immigrants and excluding people who worked and lived a certain distance from Ground Zero.

The bill failed to garner the two-thirds vote needed for passage, with 255 yes votes to 159 no votes, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of it.

Pallone said most of the Republicans who voted in favor of the bill were from New York or New Jersey.

He said last week that he is confident the bill will eventually be passed.

“In September when we come back, we will try to move it through the regular procedure that just needs a majority,” he said. “We had way more than a majority; we should be able to move it.”

Feal, who was injured as a 9/11 first responder, discussed the emotions he felt watching Congress vote on the bill he has advocated for.

“Utterly disappointed and disgusted,” he said. “The fact that Congress voted no the way they did with a partisan vote is sick and perverted.

“We knew days before the vote that this was going to happen. We were prepared for this, but it still hurt. Human life took a backseat to reckless politics.

“The vote should have been 435 to nothing,” he added. “They should have put their political affiliations and their ideologies away and voted like Americans.”

Feal, who founded the Fealgood Foundation to spread awareness and to raise funds to help 9/11 first responders, said that he blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the vote and blamed Congress as a whole.

However, Feal complimented Pallone for the way he has fought for passage of the bill.

“I have the utmost respect for Frank Pallone,” he said. “Frank Pallone’s been a champion of ours.

“He was eloquent on the floor that night, and I applaud him,” he added. “I watched Frank Pallone speak on our behalf, and I watched him fight for us.”

Feal said he plans to honor Pallone during an Aug. 19 fundraiser at Trinity Restaurant in Keyport.

Pallone explained why the suspension procedurewas used to try to get an affirmative vote on the bill.

“We tried to move it on the floor of the House on what we call suspension procedure,” he said. “It is a way to try to expedite the bill.

“When you have the bill in the regular process, it has to go through rules, there are amendments, there is a lot of time for debate.

“We wanted to move it quickly because the bill needs to still pass the Senate, and we only have until the end of the year,” he added. “Now, when we wait till September it will still pass, but we want to make sure it passes in the Senate, too.”

Feal criticized Democrats for pushing the vote under suspension rules.

“We knew putting this on the floor as a suspension, it would not have passed,” he said. “If it would have gone under regular rules, the Republicans would have tried to make amendments and the Democrats would have been afraid of those amendments.

“In the numbers game, those amendments would have been shot down just because Democrats control the house.”

Feal also criticized Republicans for voting no on the bill because they felt they weren’t able to contribute to its drafting.

“Republicans are wrong for voting no because they weren’t allowed to play,” he said. “They were like the little kids in the sand box: if they can’t play, they are going home.”

Feal did say that this setback doesn’t mean he is losing faith in the future passage of the bill.

“I am confident that when they come back, the bill is going to go to the floor and pass,” he said. “The fact that we had to wait six, seven weeks is an insult to our body of work at ground zero, and it is an insult to our body of work the last five years on this bill.”

In previous interviews, both Feal and Pallone said they are hopeful the bill would be signed into law on the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but Pallone said that is no longer possible.

“It is not possible because the House doesn’t come back into session until the Tuesday after 9/11,” he said.





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