Our elected officials: $60B for Afghanistan troop surge...Jack SHIT for ailing 9/11 responders.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

WASHINGTON — A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to people sickened by World Trade Center dust fell short in the House on Thursday, raising the possibility that the bulk of compensation for the ill will come from a legal settlement hammered out in the federal courts.

The bill would have provided free health care and compensation payments to 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who fell ill after working in the trade center ruins.

It failed to win the needed two-thirds majority, 255-159. The vote was largely along party lines, with 12 Republicans joining Democrats supporting the measure.

For weeks, a judge and teams of lawyers have been urging 10,000 former ground zero workers to sign on to a court-supervised settlement that would split $713 million among people who developed respiratory problems and other illnesses after inhaling trade center ash.

The court deal shares some similarities with the aid program that the federal legislation would have created, but it involves far less money. Only the most seriously ill of the thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers suing New York City over their exposure to the dust would be eligible for a hefty payout.

But supporters of the deal have been saying the court settlement is the only realistic option for the sick, because Congress will never act.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you can wait and wait and wait for that legislation ... it's not passing," Kenneth Feinberg, the former special master of the federal 9/11 victim compensation fund, told an audience of ground zero responders Monday in a meeting on Staten Island.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/911-responder-aid-package-fails-house_n_664562.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Shame we don't have elected REPRESENTATIVES.

Because we surely don't.

[Uncle Joe]

2. That's because the Republicans "don't support the heroes,"

in reality they don't support the troops either, they just always support the war.

Thanks for the thread, Amerigo Vespucci.