Thanks to Willie Rodriquez for sending this to me. - Jon

Dear Mr. Rodriguez:

With the start of the 110th Congress, I joined Senators Schumer, Kennedy, Lautenberg and Menendez in re-introducing the 9/11 Heroes Health Improvement Act of 2007 that would provide over $1.9 billion in medical and mental health monitoring and treatment grants, available from 2008-2012, to firefighters, police officers, EMTs, paramedics, building and construction trades workers, volunteers, residents, and others whose health was directly impacted at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills as well as those who responded to the Pentagon attack. This funding would be administered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and would expand access to health monitoring and health care to all of those who served, lived and worked in the se area s in the aftermath of 9/11. Similar legislation was introduced late last year.

Time is passing while brave, selfless people are getting sick and dying. This has to be one of the President's top priorities in his upcoming budget.I contacted the President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget to ask that some additional funds be included in the President's Budget for 2008 when it is sent up to Congress next month; but if the President will not act, then we will .

Late last year , my colleagues and I called on the President to include funds in his upcoming Fiscal Year 2008 Budget, due to be released in February. [See -http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=266329&& ]. In the event that the funding is not included, we will push hard for our own legislation to be enacted. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, of which I am a member and Senator Kennedy is Chairman has jurisdiction over the9/11 Heroes Health Improvement Act of 2007 and has also committed to hearings on 9/11 health effects in the near future.

A five-year study conducted by Mount Sinai Medical Center of Ground Zero first responders found that almost 70 percent of World Trade Center ( WTC ) responders had new or substantially worsened respiratory symptoms following their work at the WTC site. Among the responders who were asymptomatic before 9/11, 61 percent developed respiratory symptoms while working at the WTC site. Studies published by the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) also show that over 90 percent of FDNY rescue workers had new respiratory symptoms follo wing their work at WTC; over percent continue to have respiratory and or mental health symptomatology; the average decrease in pulmonary function in the first year after WTC was 372ml (12 times the annual decline in the five years pre-WTC); 25 percent of those tested who were present during the morning of the attack have objective evidence for airway hyper reactivity consistent with asthma; and nearly 700 (5 percent of exposed workforce) have qualified for respiratory disability pensions.

I have continually cautioned that those who breathed the toxic air around Ground Zero in the days, weeks and months after 9/11 would suffer health effects and now our worst fears are being realized. I am pleased that this is one of the first bills to be introduced in the new Congress and I will continue to fight for this funding because I believe we have a moral obligation as a nation to help those whose health was affected by 9/11. We must relieve their suffering and get them the help they need and deserve.

Sincerely,
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton