ParfumGigi@aol.com
23 janvier, 2007 01:29
NY Delegation: 9/11 Workers Getting Sicker
NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2007
(CBS/AP) Sen. Hillary Clinton and other lawmakers joined ailing Sept. 11 recovery workers at ground zero on Monday to demand more federal funding to treat those workers with chronic breathing problems.
"We have to provide treatment for all of the victims of 9/11," Clinton said outside the World Trade Center site, two days after announcing her presidential candidacy. "Without the president's budget commitment, the program that is treating many of these victims will end."
After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government spent $90 million on health monitoring programs, and this year it spent another $75 million — the first federal dollars specifically for treatment for workers and lower Manhattan residents sickened by their exposure to World Trade Center dust.
Clinton said Monday that money will run out by this summer.
She was joined by the father of a retired police detective who died a year ago and several workers who said they were sickened by the toxic dust that enveloped lower Manhattan after the twin towers collapsed. Several of those workers said they planned to attend President George W. Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
"We have been given a slow, slow death sentence, and that's simply not right," said Marvin Bethea, a paramedic who said he has suffered everything from asthma to post-traumatic stress disorder after his work at ground zero. "It's all about the money. They don't want to pay the money."
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.
Clinton and others called for the president to include money for treatment in his budget, and she said she would introduce legislation securing an additional $1.9 billion for further treatment.
"I believe this is a moral responsibility of our nation," she said.
