Appropriations Measure for World Trade Center Health Program Clears Hurdles
A final vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 3 locked in budget allocations for the World Trade Center Health Program through 2040, and averted a funding shortfall that would have resulted (as soon as next year) in denial of care for people made sick by toxic debris from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Senate enacted its version of this bill in late January, followed by the House, but both ratifications were temporarily called into question at the end of last week when members of Congress objected to funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without reforms to immigration enforcement, following the recent deaths of two protestors in Minnesota. (This affected the Health Program because language governing its funding was inserted into a budget bill for DHS.)
This resulted in a partial shutdown of the federal government, which began on Friday evening. Since then, the Senate has voted to extend the deadline for the DHS budget bill by two weeks, to facilitate negotiations about immigration enforcement, while the leadership of the House has scheduled a new vote (on a bill identical to the one they approved in January) for today. President Donald Trump has indicated that he intends to sign this bill when it reaches his desk.
This bill, once it becomes law, will fund the Health Program for an additional 14 years, which represents a compromise relative to a similar measure that passed Congress with bipartisan support in late 2024. That measure would have funded the Health Program through its planned sunset in 2090, but was derailed at the eleventh hour in the political chaos surrounding another government shutdown.
Benjamin Chevat, executive director of 911 Health Watch, a nonprofit that seeks to ensure the federal government’s long-term commitment to the health and well-being of September 11 responders, survivors, and their families, said, “the impending funding crisis has been averted. The new formula provides substantially more funding for the program that it needs to be able to provide care for the September 11 community going forward, and removes the threat of cuts to services that would have started in 2027.”
In a separate development, on January 12, Mr. Chevat wrote to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the federal agency that oversees the Health Program), calling upon him to remove the hiring freeze he imposed on the World Trade Center Health Program and allow it to hire staff. He also asked that critical research be allowed to go forward, that communications restrictions between the program and the September 11 community be lifted, and that decisions on petitions to include cardiac, autoimmune and cognitive conditions to the list of covered conditions be announced.
Mr. Chevat’s letter said, “the program’s staffing level, which was 93 on Inauguration Day, and should have been expanded to the 120 authorized by the Office of Management and Budget, now stands at 84. That means there are 36 vacancies, more than 25 percent of the 120 staff, the required minimum needed to ensure medical monitoring and treatment for the responders and survivors enrolled in the program. This decline in staffing has occurred at the same time as program enrollment has continued to grow – by approximately 20,000 over the last two years and is now on track to increase by another 10,000 this year, a nearly 25 percent increase in program members. You have created a 25 percent staff shortfall in the face of a 25 percent increase in members.”