Money for 9/11 Health Care Was Dropped from Year-End Spending Bill

A plan to ensure long-term funding to address health needs stemming from the terrorist attacks fell to the wayside after President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk objected to a bipartisan budget deal.

James Brosi, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, traveled to Washington last week to personally thank Speaker Mike Johnson for including long-term funding to help people with the lingering health effects from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as part of a bipartisan spending deal.

But by day’s end on Wednesday, President-elect Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, had scuttled the bill with their criticism that it was bloated and failed to deliver on Mr. Trump’s priorities. After a tumultuous standoff, the House and Senate finally approved stripped-down legislation at the end of the week to avert a government shutdown — without providing money for the health fund.

Mr. Brosi said he was crushed. Firefighters, he said, had thought they were finally closing a chapter in the yearslong battle to end periodic shortfalls and secure long-term funding for emergency workers and others who have grown deathly ill from the toxins of ground zero.

“Obviously we are not against smarter spending and we’re not against cutting wasteful spending,” Mr. Brosi said. “What we are against is universal killing of a bill without looking deeper into individual parts of it that have merit and are not wasteful spending.”

Asked about Mr. Trump’s role in torpedoing the deal that contained the health funding, Karoline Leavitt, his spokeswoman, said in a statement, “President Trump looks forward to working with the new Congress after he is sworn in to enact his America First agenda and the priorities of the American people, such as ensuring that 9/11 first responders get the care they need.”

The initial legislation included a provision that would have ensured care through about 2040 for victims of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, as well as the police officers, nurses, firefighters and volunteers who inhaled toxic fumes, dust and smoke at ground zero.

Mr. Brosi said more than 130,000 people were still paying the price of that day, suffering respiratory ailments and other illnesses. About 35,000 people in the program have been diagnosed with cancer, he said.

New York lawmakers had unanimously championed the health funding and had cheered its inclusion in a sprawling budget deal, which had been negotiated by Republicans and Democrats including Mr. Johnson and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader.

Mr. Musk then demanded that Republicans renounce that measure and threatened on social media to “vote out” any member who voted for it. Mr. Trump also made an 11th-hour demand to increase the debt limit.

Mr. Johnson tried to pass a slimmer spending plan that pared down the original 1,547-page bill to 116 pages and suspended the nation’s debt limit for two years. That failed to pass in the House, with 38 Republicans voting against it.

Finally, the House on Friday passed a measure that kept the government open, extended the farm bill for one year and appropriated billions of dollars in disaster relief and assistance for farmers.

Among the many things it did not include, however, was language to increase the debt limit — or the formula to ensure long-term funding for the Sept. 11 health program.

Democrats said they put the blame for its elimination squarely on Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump. A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said that he and Democrats pushed to include the health fund in the final package, but that Republicans rejected it.

“When Donald Trump asked Republicans to redo their budget, they heartlessly discarded the 9/11 health fund,” Mr. Schumer said. In an interview, Mr. Schumer said he intended to push again to include the measure in the next government funding extension, probably in March, and said he believed that it had a good chance of passing. The health fund does not sunset until 2027.

“It’s time to make it permanent so our firefighters, our police officers, our first responders, when they have cancer and are ill, don’t have to keep coming down to Washington and lobbying,” Mr. Schumer said.

Mr. Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, said that without the new funding formula, the World Trade Center fund was likely to go into deficit in 2027. He said time was running out to ensure funding.

“The survivors, who have enough problems, don’t want to have to roam the halls of Congress every year,” Mr. Nadler said. Meanwhile, the blame “is entirely on Musk, Trump and the Republican Party,” Mr. Nadler said.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said, “If we don’t fully fund the program, it will start having to ration care and ration compensation.”

She also blamed Mr. Musk, saying that he “decided to insert himself in a very selfish and irresponsible way. He tanked the bill, clearly without having read it or understanding the implications, and it has harmed our first responders.”

Ms. Gillibrand noted that Mr. Trump during his first term supported the health program and said she expected that he would again when he returned to the White House in January.

Mr. Brosi said he felt that Democrats as well as Republicans had not made the Sept. 11 health fund enough of a priority, and lamented that the program was typically lumped into a larger budget bill, as it was last week, and made vulnerable to cuts.

“As a result, we are in a pork fight and oftentimes we are one of the first things that are cut,” he said. “We should have been part of a stand-alone bill. We should have been a priority for the New York delegation.”

Mr. Brosi noted that when Mr. Trump ran for re-election, he made a case to labor unions and represented a Republican Party that said it stood with the middle class. “Well, those are the people down at 9/11, the nurses and the firemen,” Mr. Brosi said.

“President-elect Trump is a New Yorker and he certainly understands the impact 9/11 had,” he said. “We hope that he makes this a priority in the earliest part of his administration.”