Spending bill would extend care to 9/11 responders

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

First-responders who rushed to the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks, spent weeks cleaning up the site and later became sick will have access to federal health benefits for the rest of their lives.

A year-end spending bill released early Wednesday morning and expected to pass this week would extend federal health monitoring and treatment for 9/11 first responders through 2090, making the program essentially permanent. It treats first-responders and other victims who were exposed to toxic dust at the site and is estimated to cost $3.5 billion over the next 10 years.

In addition to the health fund, the legislation would pay an additional $4.6 billion into a compensation fund for the victims and extend it for five years.

As part of the deal to extend the 9/11 benefits, lawmakers also included a separate provision creating a new fund to compensate some victims of state-sponsored terrorism, including the American hostages held in Iran from 1979 through 1981 and victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

The 9/11 legislation is named after James Zadroga, a responder who died after working at Ground Zero. It first became law in 2010, and the health benefits expired this past fall.

Some of the 9/11 first responders – many of them sick or dying – made several trips to Washington in recent weeks to lobby Congress to reinstate the benefits. Comedian Jon Stewart also lent a hand, stopping senators in hallways and pushing them to back the program.

“Never again will survivors and responders be forced to walk the halls of Congress, begging for their health care,” said New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat. “Never again will they lose sleep over fear that this life-saving program will run out.”

Federal officials had said the fund will face challenges by February and have to start shutting down by next summer if the money does not come. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees the program, more than 70,000 people have enrolled, including more than 4,000 with cancer. Many have severe pulmonary diseases.