No Money for Sick 9/11 First Responders

Eric Boehlert‏--  if you want a glimpse into what a viciously awful entity the GOP has become, they have stood in the way of helping 9/11 first responders FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS

The NY DailyNews article:

The answer no one in Washington could provide Monday was why Congress can't just pass the law that would finally take care of the men and women who ran towards the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. But that was the question on the minds of dozens of responders and people sickened in communities around Ground Zero who arrived on Capitol Hill to pass a new 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. It would permanently replenish the one that is cutting payouts by 50 percent and 70 percent now, and expires in 2020.

"There's people who don't have a pension, who are too sick to work, who don't have insurance now. This is money that they need for their families now," Alvarez said. "If I go, my wife and three boys are going to be OK. That's a stress that I don't have," he said. "When you're fighting cancer, the last thing you want to worry about is money." 

(snip)

The former host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, also lobbied lawmakers with responders. He called it "baffling" that lawmakers won't just pass the new bill. But if he didn't have an answer for why not to just pass it, he did blame a specific "impediment" -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who sets the schedule for bills in the Senate. 

"Mitch McConnell has made this a problem. Only him. And I put the blame and the onus on him because he could fix it tomorrow," Stewart said, remembering that the 2015 Zadroga Act ran afoul of various legislative horse trading that McConnell had a hand in. 

"If tomorrow he said let's do this as a clean bill ... this would be done. And none of these people would have to be here." A spokesman for McConnell simply pointed to the fact that Zadroga did pass in the end, and Stewart at the time expressed gratitude. 

McConnell's Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed the new compensation act will get its vote. "We were able to get up-or-down votes before. We will get one now," Schumer said. "Everyone in the Senate should stand on notice. They're going to have to say yes or no."