Politics
Nation Pauses for 9/11 Health Victims After Finding Format That Requires No Funding
By Sean Vanity, . BSN Network. Satire.
A moment of silence was held near Ground Zero this week to honor the thousands of police officers, firefighters, construction workers and volunteers who have spent the last two decades developing rare cancers, respiratory diseases and neurological conditions as a direct result of breathing in the wreckage of the worst attack on American soil in living memory.
The moment lasted approximately sixty seconds. The Victim Compensation Fund has been running for about twenty years. Both efforts have produced roughly similar results.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams attended and described the occasion as "a powerful reminder of the resilience and sacrifice that define this city." He did not mention that the fund distributing money to those same resilient, sacrificed people had its authorization nearly lapse in 2019 and was only renewed after Jon Stewart sat in front of Congress and publicly humiliated several members who had other things to do that day. Jon Stewart. A comedian. Had to drag grown adults back into the room to fund dying cops. That happened.
The VCF, for those keeping score, has paid out over $11 billion to more than 100,000 claimants, a number that sounds enormous until you realize that the qualifying illness list took years to expand, that many applicants spent the better part of a decade being told their cancer "could not be conclusively linked" to Ground Zero exposure, and that the fund is currently operating under an 80 percent payout reduction because it needs more money and Congress has a full calendar.
Representative Mike Lawler of New York attended the ceremony and said it was "a moment to reflect on the courage of those who ran toward danger." He did not announce any new legislation. He did announce that he was there, physically, which is a thing politicians have gotten extremely good at.
The firefighters who hauled debris for months with no respiratory protection are now, on average, being diagnosed with 9/11-related cancers at a rate that the CDC has described, in its characteristically enthusiastic way, as "significantly elevated." The most common diagnosis is blood cancer. The second most common is a form of lung disease that makes it difficult to breathe, which is a medical outcome so poetically on the nose that a less tasteful publication might note it and move on.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called the ceremony "an important acknowledgment of the long-term human cost of that day." The Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, in direct response to 9/11, has a budget of $60 billion, and does not administer the Victim Compensation Fund. That is a different department. Nobody at the ceremony was entirely sure which one.
The moment of silence, to be fair, is not nothing. It is a dignified and appropriate gesture. It is also completely free, requires no committee vote, cannot be filibustered, does not need to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and expires cleanly at the sixty-second mark with no renewal hearings.
In that sense, it is the most efficiently administered benefit these men and women have ever received.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-moment-of-silence-held-for-those-lost-to-9-11-health-effects-269728325980