Sen. Thune Admits Bush Tax Cut Extensions Are More Of A Priority Than 9/11 Workers? Health
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 16th, 2010 5:40 am by HL
Sen. Thune Admits Bush Tax Cut Extensions Are More Of A Priority Than 9/11 Workers? Health
On Fox Business Network this morning, Don Imus aggressively questioned Senator — and possible presidential hopeful — John Thune (R-SD) about Republican obstruction of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, which would provide desperately needed health care to those who volunteered to help at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the […]
On Fox Business Network this morning, Don Imus aggressively questioned Senator — and possible presidential hopeful — John Thune (R-SD) about Republican obstruction of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, which would provide desperately needed health care to those who volunteered to help at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Imus raised Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s recent point about Republicans who frequently invoke 9/11 imagery, but refuse to help the workers, and asked Thune how he could defend this refusal. Thune explained that preserving the Bush tax cuts was more of a priority:
IMUS: It seems to me and it seems to others that if we’re going to help anybody, we would certainly help these Americans who were the first responders to 9/11.
THUNE: The difference I think with the tax bill is there is a deadline, Jan. 1, we have to get this done, taxes go up on Jan. 1, that’s a matter of law. We need to get the issue addressed for the firefighters and the 9/11 victims and we will. But again there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this, and there’s a way in which you can pay for these things, and try and get this thing to where it doesn’t cost quite as much, where it doesn’t provide as much exposure, as much liability – there are some things in this bill that we think can be improved upon. We need an opportunity to do that.They want to rush through all these things at the end of the year, without debate, without amdendments, with the opportunity to go through a normal process. And I think we can do that, we can do many of these last-minute initiatives they’re trying to push through, we can do them next year.
IMUS: I know there’s a deadline on the tax situation, but there’s also a deadline on the health of these firemen and these police officers.
Watch it:
Thune’s admission that tax cuts are a higher priority is stunning, as are his admonitions against “rushing” the Zadroga bill. As Imus correctly notes, there’s a very real deadline on the health of 9/11 volunteers who are desperately awaiting health care assistance from the country they served over nine years ago. For example, just this fall, Joe Picurro, a 9/11 volunteer who was central to the push for health care assistance — and who himself suffered for years with little or no health care — passed away. As the New York Daily News reported:
Joe Picurro volunteered to cut steel at Ground Zero more than nine years ago. It cost him his life Friday morning. […]
“He fought up until the day he went,” said wife Laura Picurro. “I’m going to miss him, like unbelievable.”
Because Picurro volunteered, he had to fight for years to get any aid after 9/11 charities closed.
Even as his lungs deteriorated and late-night rushes to the emergency rooms grew all too familiar, he and Laura still had to fight bureaucrats who refused to recognize the source of his problems. When he finally got workers’ compensation in 2006, he was down to his last nickel.
Laura had to scrimp, scrape and borrow to make ends meet, care for Joe – and stave off eviction. “I don’t know how we made it, still in this house, the lights still on,” she said, her voice cracking.
But Picurro’s tale made him one of the symbols of how the heroes of 9/11 were being forgotten. He joined the push on Congress to pass the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act. His death was a blow to a community that has seen all too much tragedy, with hundreds of 9/11 responders having died over the years.
As the report notes, Picurro and other volunteers have been waiting for years for assistance from the federal government. Thune’s whining that Democrats are “rushing” the Zadroga bill through is patently ridiculous. The bill, or very similar versions, were first introduced in the House over four years ago, and have suffered repeated Republican obstruction ever since. Nevertheless, Thune apparently finds the preservation of low tax rates for the wealthy to be a more pressing matter.
While Attacking Omnibus For Earmarks, McConnell And Senate GOP Asked For Billions For Themselves
Republican lawmakers and candidates have spent the past year railing against congressional earmarks as the embodiment of everything wrong with “business as usual in Washington.” And under heavy pressure from the tea party movement, they approved earmark bans for GOP members in the House and Senate last month. Yesterday, the Senate unveiled an omnibus appropriations […]
Republican lawmakers and candidates have spent the past year railing against congressional earmarks as the embodiment of everything wrong with “business as usual in Washington.” And under heavy pressure from the tea party movement, they approved earmark bans for GOP members in the House and Senate last month.
Yesterday, the Senate unveiled an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government. Senate Republicans immediately attacked the bill en masse for containing billions in earmarks, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling the spending provisions “completely and totally inappropriate” and saying he is “actively working to defeat” the bill. “This nearly 2,000-page omnibus filled with thousands of earmarks,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, shows that “President Obama and Democrats have apparently learned nothing from this November’s election.”
Yet, the same may be said about congressional Republicans, who themselves requested over $2 billion in the earmarks attached the omnibus, including millions from McConnell himself:
Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “has a $379,000 earmark to study port dredging in Charleston, something he considers key to economic development.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) championed an earmark that would prevent the state of Texas from converting existing interstate highway lanes into toll roads. And Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) requested over $16 million in defense-related earmarks.
Appearing on Fox News this morning, Cornyn attacked the omnibus bill for containing earmarks, but host Bill Hemmer confronted Cornyn with his own $16 million request. At first, the senator fumbled and tried to change the subject, but after being pressed, Cornyn defended the merits of his earmarks but not the process, before finally trying to exculpate himself by saying he requested the money “earlier on in the year”:
HEMMER: You yourself has asked for earmarks too. … Can you defend that senator?
CORNYN: Well, I believe I can. But I’m not going to. Because I’m going to vote against this bill. … I think we need an earmark moratorium, which I voted for two years, till we fix this broken system, because it’s become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.
HEMMER: I get it, but I’m confused then, then why is there $16 million in requests from you? Is that not true?
CORNYN: Earlier on in the year, I did request earmarks that I think are individually defensible. And if we had a debate on the floor, I think I could show how they help our men and women in uniform fight two different wars.
Watch it:
Of course, Cornyn is right to argue that many earmarks have merit and provide necessary funds for important projects in lawmakers’ districts. For this reason, Democrats and a handful of dissenting Republicans rebuffed efforts to impose a binding earmark ban in the Senate last month. Moreover, as retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) said, “We’re fooling the American people when we tell them the problem [with the deficit] is earmarks.”
But if Cornyn and his colleagues are going to pander to the tea party movement and demonize earmarks, they should at least practice what they preach. But so far, they have not. Just three days after the Senate GOP voted to enact their earmark ban, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Senate Republican, “got himself a whopping $200 million” earmark for his state. Meanwhile, the group of House Republicans most closely aligned with the tea party, those in the Tea Party Caucus, have taken over $1 billion in earmarks over the past year.
