Posted on 12/09/2010 11:00:23 AM PST by Haiku Guy
WASHINGTON - The 9/11 health bill failed its first key Senate test Thursday as Republicans filibustered the measure to aid ailing heroes of the worst terror attack in American history.
The measure went down 57-42 on a strictly party-line vote, although Majority Leader Harry Reid ultimately voted 'No' to reserve the right to bring the measure back.
The failure means the GOP has blocked the start of debate on the measure.
Even some Republicans who might have backed the bill gave it the thumbs-down, sticking to a party pledge to block anything until the tax deal extending the Bush-era cuts for the wealthy passes.
There are still some strategies the bill's backers can try to save it, but the failure enraged 9/11 responders.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
It must be important.
The Dems let the bill sit for almost 2 years.
Is this the thing for the Jersey Girls?
I'm a bit confused. Didn't they get paid for the work they did? Don't they have health care through the unions?
The health effects aren't nebulous. The effects of this kind of exposure have been studied; see this from the CDC, this, and there are many other studies. Go to Pub Med and search on "world trade center pulmonary" or "world trade center disease" and you'll find peer reviewed articles on this.
Please also be aware that some of those volunteering for searching the rubble, or clean up, were not "signed up for a dangerous job." They were volunteers who turned out to help. Here's the story of some one who died from the effects.
Frequent trips to the ER because you can't breathe are not "riding the leisure train."
Are you telling me 95% of Americans don't see the false "unbiased" "reporting" that goes on in these articles every day? They skirt it by using special singular adjectives in their "reports", just like this. Apparently, so many people are incapable of seeing these little snide cuts couched in "unbiased articles". I know; only FoxNews is a biased/prejudiced org.
Thank you for your service. I never heard any of my co-workers refer to themselves or think of themselves as heroes. That was your word.
Not a chance.
My argument is not with the responders, many of whom who are sick and deserve help. My argument is with the Congressional Democrats who cynically roll out this fundamentally flawed bill, over and over again, in order to score cheap political points when the Republicans do the responsible thing and vote it down.
It would be nice if there was bipartisan consensus to kill this bill, which is rife with potential for fraud and abuse, and replace it with a real solution. But the Democrats don’t want to do that. They want to keep both hands on this club, so they can keep beating the Republicans over the head with it.
Meanwhile, the sick responders suffer. They should not hold their breath waiting for the Democrats to solve the problem.
I have no trouble with your argument, wanting real solutions. I do want to point out there are genuine health effects on those who breathed the air at and around Ground Zero. Pulmonary fibrosis isn’t “nebulous” and neither are some of the other pulmonary effects. I have seen too many people with asthma, COPD and pulmonary fibrosis to dismiss those diseases as trivial.
What solution do you suggest?
There is no solution to the illness, of course. Many of these diseases are chronic with no cure.
The site should have been better controlled to ensure that everybody had proper respiratory protection and used it. There is no excuse, in this modern age, for workers to go into an unknown environment with probable hazards without proper respirators.
For the sick emergency personnel, such as Fire, EMT and Police, I would support additional funds to ensure that their medical and disability payments be met without any additional expense to the city.
For the construction, demolition and other workers, I would support working with their employers and provide grants to ensure that they receive quality medical care and have generous lifetime disability insurance if they become disabled as a result of a disease related to the exposures they suffered.
And in all cases, there should be a life insurance component to deal with the likelihood of early death.
Republicans vowed not to allow any bills to come to a vote until existing tax rates are protected for all Americans. They made a deal with Obama on taxes and want to see it honored.
Democrats in Congress are playing politics by dragging up every other bill first instead of getting taxes out of the way like adults.
With years to get to them, they didn't care about DADT, tax increases, etc. It was only once they lost big at the ballot box do they go scorched earth by using the GOP's vow against them knowing the press would be complicit and Obama wouldn't pressure them.
So true. The response was a managerial fiasco that I believe cost more lives.
You folks joined FR in recent years but I was here back then and we lost one of our own, Battalion Chief Moran, in one of the tower collapses.
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