If they could read it themselves, they wouldn’t demand it be read to them! Have a little compassion, here!
you may want to check that. it’s more like 1.5% of the wage earners.
Yep. Only about 6% of earners are even over $100,000.
The House passed the bill on September 29, which was when the Senate went out of session so everyone could go back home and run for re-election. So the lame duck session has been the first opportunity for the Senate to take up the House-passed legislation.
You know, I’m curious about something. Given that the towers were largely filled with trading operations, financial poo-bahs, and other such moneyed interests…along with a smattering of waiters, waitresses, janitorial help and so forth…
By what increment or percentage did the yearly wage of the people working in the tower exceed the yearly wage of the people who are dying because they tried to help them?
Right - the House passed the bill in September. But even then it was a partisan vote - Republicans had major objections to the bill as written. Looking at the congressional record it seems that objections were raised over the cost, the broadened criteria of first responders and the fact that claimants may file a first claim for 21 more years.
The general sentiment seemed to be that a simple reopening of the old 9/11 fund for a five year period was a better solution. This was the recommendation of Ken Feinberg, the special master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, in committee testimony.
And again, this is on top of existing arrangements concerning medical care and disability.
To say there is no justification for the GOP’s behavior is absurd. That might be the case if the Senate Republicans were voting differently than the House Republicans. They are not - and not for reasons of not caring about first responders, but for differences of opinion about the scope and structure of a program.
Republicans also objected to paying for that healthcare by closing a tax loophole for companies hiding income overseas. Because all taxes are bad.
A quick look at the bill shows that it allocates 7.4 billion dollars to compensate first responders in the 9/11 attack.
I looked to see if I could find a number for how many first responders there were, but this is a very elusive number because the definition is hard to pin down. Estimates seem to range around 10,000, plus or minus a few thousand.
7.4 billion dollars divided by 10,000 is $740,000 for every single person who responded to the call that day. Does that strike anyone as a reasonable number?
Now, this money should only be going to people who developed illnesses as a result. I’ve seen estimates as high as 70% for the number of respiratory illnesses reported as a result of 9/11. I find that to be an absurdly high number. Of course, the promise of a million bucks or more can cause a lot of people to discover respiratory problems, and the promise of big fees can cause lawyers to work very hard to broaden the definition of both first responder and the diagnostic criterion of any ‘illness’ they may have developed.
Frankly, this sounds more like a shakedown of the Federal Government and taxpayers by special interests trading on the genuine gratitude and respect people have for the first responders on that day.
If you really want to help the first responders, why not simply pass a bill that promises free health care to anyone being treated for 9/11 related illnesses, and income compensation for anyone forced to retire early due to injuries suffered that day? Why make it a gigantic financial slush fund?
And on moral grounds, why should the 9/11 first responders be treated any differently than first responders to other types of disasters? A fireman charging into a burning refinery runs all kinds of risks of injury and exposure to toxic chemicals. Why aren’t they part of this?
This reminds me a bit of the Pigford settlement, which started as an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the USDA by 400 black farmers, but once it was discovered that the federal government was planning some form of blanket compensation, people came out of the woodwork with tales of discrimination, bloating the cost of the settlement up into the many billions of dollars range. More black ‘farmers’ registered with the class action than there are black farmers in the U.S, because the definition of who was a farmer was constantly widened during the course of negotiations.
Again, it looks to be a case of a real wrong done to a small group of people, turned into a giant shakedown scheme by a whole bunch of lawyers and special interests once the Federal Government promised to open the financial floodgates.
By then the obstruction issue had already reared its head. The bill failed in July. The Democrats tried to pass it by procedural rules that would have prevented the Republicans from adding amendments (like provisions to deny benefits to any first responders who were illegal immigrants) but didn’t get enough votes.
As a one-time payment chronic medical problems? I don’t find it unreasonable.
That’ll happen when you spend a few weeks inhaling asbestos and glass concrete. Do you think this comes within light years of being a well reasoned argument? You’re blindly opining on numbers and saying they feel too high. I have no problem admitting there are potential complications in administering the fund and defining who got sick specifically from their exposure to the stuff in the air at that point, but this is ridiculous.
In other words, if they set the money aside for the first responders but said it was a blank check - not a defined amount, just as much money as they need - that would be alright, but starting with a defined number is a problem?
Given the shit that was in the air on site, I’m not remotely surprised.
Because this is about one single incident? I’m pretty sure firemen do get their healthcare paid for, because they constantly put their lives on the line.
And it’s a crying shame that to back up that claim, all you have are insinuations and disingenuous comparisons instead of actual evidence.
I wouldn’t have a problem with a bill that provided for health care for first responders. Even assuming you could create one and then apply it to the September 11 responders, a bill for them already exists. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel on that score.
And as far as what makes September 11th responders different - for some reason I have to mention this every time this topic comes up, butthese people were assured by the government that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. The government, of course, was totally wrong and we know how that has worked out for the people who took its word. Firefighters don’t usually spend months inside a burning building, and they usually don’t solicit the government’s opinion to find out if it is safe to work there.
Dated September 18, 2001.
Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not higher than 70 percent.
And $740,000 per person doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount, seeing as how the costs for treating not only respiratory illness, but any other ailments you may have suffered as a result of working at the site, can really add up, especially in the long term.
From the citation I gave above:
9. Have gains by the rich come at the expense of a declining living standard for the middle class?
No. If Bill Gates suddenly took his tens of billions of dollars and moved to France, income distribution in America would temporarily appear more equitable, even though no one would be better off. Median family income in America between 1980 and 2004 grew by 17 percent. The middle class (defined as those between the 40th and the 60th percentiles of income) isn’t falling behind or “disappearing.” It is getting richer. The lower income bound for the middle class has risen by about $12,000 (after inflation) since 1967. The upper income bound for the middle class is now roughly $68,000—some $23,000 higher than in 1967. Thus, a family in the 60th percentile has 50 percent more buying power than 30 years ago. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has been a “rising tide” expansion, with most (though not all) boats lifted.
I notice in reading the bill that it isn’t limited to first responders - there are sections there for survivors of the terrorist attacks that day.
Now, how well constructed is the gateway here? I was working in Crystal City at the time of the 9/11 attacks and my office building filled with smoke from the burning Pentagon. Since then I have had some seemingly qualifying health problems - not surprising since the list of them associated with this bill is quite broad.
Would I be entitled to money from this Act? I don’t think I deserve any - I don’t consider myself a survivor of anything. At best I was a bystander. But there doesn’t seem to be a clear line rule to deny a claim if I was foolish enough to press one.
Isn’t it funny how times wounds all heels.
If a someone would have posted that same sentence on 9/12/2001 he’d have been banned as a troll inside of 10 minutes.
I think you would if you convinced the people adminstering the fund that your health problems stemmed from the attacks.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be a partisan issue, there’s a good chance that any number of those first responders were Republicans. At that time, at any rate.
nm
Crowning, ghastly irony: if something like this happens again, our first responders will be asked to risk their health, once more, and they will know that the same fate may well befall them. And most of them will go.
Where do we get such people?
I’m not saying we deserve such people, not sure that we can deserve such people. Saying we should at least try.
I’d be a bit more impressed with the argument that Democrats’ attempts to do something for the 9/11 first responders are being thwarted by GOP prioritizing the needs of the wealthy - if there was evidence that this issue meant more to the Dems than an opportunity to score political points.
I don’t recall the Democrats ranking the first responders’ legislation high on their list of lame-duck session priorities - in fact, you’d be hard pressed to find it mentioned at all in news articles and press releases leading up to the session.
The Democrats unveiled a big laundry list of things they wanted to do - so many that it arguably hindered chances for any single one of them to make it through.
Near the top of that priorities list was extending the “Bush tax cuts for the wealthy” (which is what the Dems called the tax cuts when they were first enacted, before they “discovered” that the great majority of that money was going to middle class taxpayers whose votes they coveted). Other items getting heavy focus have been the “Dream Act” for children brought illegally into the country, repealing DADT, a renewable electricity standard, cybersecurity, Chinese currency manipulation etc. Funds for first responders appear to have been well down the list, if they made it at all.
The current outrage in some quarters over that bill seems manufactured for political consumption.
Should we be outraged at the left-wing Dems who’ve fought approval of the tax cut legislation in order to hold out for not extending relief to top earners? It’s Paul Krugman’s fault!*
*actually I agree with him on this issue - don’t extend the cuts for anyone; it’s not going to have a significant effect on the economy and we can’t afford them and provide the services people need.