Rally at Ground Zero Aims to Build Support for 9/11 Health Care Legislation

[Dig]

Rally at Ground Zero Aims to Build Support for 9/11 Health Care Legislation
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/090907Rally.htm
RAY RIVERA
NY Times
Sunday September 9, 2007

Several hundred union workers and elected officials, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, rallied near ground zero yesterday in support of federal legislation that would provide long-term monitoring and treatment for people exposed to dust in Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 cleanup.

“The fact that men and women are ill and not being helped here is a national disgrace,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney said. “We are the wealthiest nation on earth; the least we can do is provide health care for the men and women who were there on 9/11. They were here for us. We need to be here for them.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and some members of New York’s Congressional delegation had been calling on the federal government to assume more of the financial burden of ground zero-related health problems.

Representative Vito Fossella, Republican of New York, who sponsored the bill with Ms. Maloney and Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, both Democrats, said the federal government had been reluctant to provide a steady flow of money. That reluctance seemed to be waning, he said, as more scientific evidence about the illnesses emerged.