WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Thursday derailed a bill to aid people who got sick after exposure to dust from the World Trade Center’s collapse in the Sept. 11 attack. Supporters were three votes short of the 60 needed to proceed to debate and a final vote on the bill that would have provided as much as $7.4 billion in health care and compensation to 9/11 responders and survivors. The bill failed on a test vote, 57-42. Fifty-seven Democrats voted for the bill and 41 Republicans opposed it. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, switched his vote to ‘no’ at the last moment, a parliamentary move that allows him to bring the measure up again for a vote…. Republican senators have promised not to consider any other bills until the Senate acts on funding the government and extending tax cuts. The defeat was a huge blow to New York and New Jersey lawmakers who have long fought for the measure, arguing it’s morally wrong to not do more for the health needs of ailing 9/11 responders and survivors…. “We should not have to wait for tax deals to do what’s right,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a lead advocate of the bill.
As much as I’ve resolved to devote myself less to politics (given the wasteland that is Washington these days), there are still things that get my ire up. The idea that Republicans will not allow ANYTHING to pass into law until they get tax cuts for their wealthy benefactors and their way on funding the government is beyond reprehensible. While I’ve never suspected that Republicans would be mistaken for Mother Teresa, neither did I suspect that they could be so thoroughly devoid of compassion and simple human decency. That these troglodytes aren’t laughed out of Congress is a travesty in and of itself. That they can conduct the People’s business in manner so thoroughly inhuman simply defies rational understanding.
I can think of no good reason why this country (and its elected representatives) shouldn’t be doing everything in their power to care for the needs of those first responders still suffering from their service in the aftermath of 9.11. That Republicans are willing to serve them a dish of refusal covered in a rich “f—k you” sauce puts the lie to their claims that they care about this country. Republicans refuse to make $7.4 billion available to provide for the health care needs of 9.11 first responders…and yet they’re insisting on $700 billion in tax cuts for the super-rich?
Perhaps I’m naive, but I’d actually been thinking prior to this week that Republicans were human beings capable of actual, honest-to-God feelings, emotions, and compassion for the less fortunate among us. Realizing the truth and the depth of the GOP’s inhumanity stuns even me. Not even I would have suspected that Republicans were so thoroughly and completely self-absorbed and so thoroughly incapable of anything even faintly resembling compassion.
WE DESERVE BETTER. And so do those who rushed into what most fled on 9.11. I can only hope that there’s a special place in Hell for those Republicans who believe that tax cuts for the wealthy trump providing health care for 9.11 first responders.
