'Unfathomable': Firefighters slam spending bill after Trump 'scuttled' 9/11 first-responders fund

24 December 2024

The United States avoided a federal government shutdown when President Joe Biden, on December 21, signed into law a three-month stopgap spending bill that had passed in both houses of Congress.

One of the things the bill didn't include was funding for 9/11 first-responders, much to the disappointment of some New York City firefighters.

NY1.com's Noorulain Khawaja reports, "The stopgap bill passed to avoid a government shutdown did not include funding for those suffering from 9/11-related illnesses…. The bill was expected to fund the World Trade Center Health Program through 2040. Currently, the program is only fully funded through 2027."

Khawaja quotes Andrew Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, as saying, "It's not a New York problem, it's America’s problem."

Jim Brosi, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, told NY1, "It is unfathomable that these people will not take the responsibility to fund this…. The fact that we keep asking for repeated funding because people keep getting sick, it's disingenuous and it’s very disappointing; 35,000 people that currently have cancer deserve treatment. They shouldn't be worried whether a facility will close, whether they will not receive authorization, or whether or not they will be overwhelmed by medical bills because the government failed to do what they promised to do."

This wasn't the first time firefighters expressed their disappointment with elected officials.

In early October, the International Association of Fire Fighters announced that it would not be making an endorsement in the United States' 2024 presidential race. Although the union endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, it didn't endorse either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump this year.

According to New York Times reporters Lisa Friedman and Maggie Haberman, Elon Musk — the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X, formerly Twitter — is one of the reasons the stopgap bill that Biden signed into law didn't include additional funding for 9/11 first-responders.

Brosi, Friedman and Haberman report, visited Washington, D.C. to "personally thank" House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) for including 9/11 first-responders in a spending bill. That bill, however, didn't pass.

"By day's end on Wednesday, (December 18)," the Times reporters explain, "President-elect Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk, the world's richest man, had scuttled the bill with their criticism that it was bloated and failed to deliver on Mr. Trump's priorities. After a tumultuous standoff, the House and Senate finally approved stripped-down legislation at the end of the week to avert a government shutdown — without providing money for the health fund. Mr. Brosi said he was crushed."

Brosi told the Times, "Obviously we are not against smarter spending, and we're not against cutting wasteful spending. What we are against is universal killing of a bill without looking deeper into individual parts of it that have merit and are not wasteful spending."

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