Local Leaders Support Funding Push for World Trade Center Health Program
Community Board 1 is joining the campaign to boost the federal budget allocation for the World Trade Center Health Program. A resolution enacted at the Board’s September meeting says that the panel “fully supports the Survivor Health Funding Correction Act of 2024.” This is a proposed federal law that will (if enacted) allocate permanent and mandatory funding for the Health Program, while also modernizing outdated appropriations formulas to prevent future shortfalls.
The same measure notes that the Health Program “will have to start making cuts to services for the injured and ill September 11 responders and survivors it serves starting in 2028. This includes the responders and survivors who will be newly diagnosed with September 11-associated cancers caused by their toxic exposures. Starting in 2028 the program would have to start turning away new responders and survivors who become sick from September 11 conditions and in subsequent years start to make direct cuts in services for those in the program receiving care.”
The bill now before Congress aims to ensure that the Health Program has all the money necessary for the next ten years, after which its funding mechanism is revised to prevent future shortfalls through the planned sunset of benefits in 2090. The bill also increases appropriations for research and data collection related to conditions associated with September 11, with a particular focus on mental health and dementia.
The CB1 resolution adds that the bill “would also provide for an increase of funding for surveillance capabilities and research on September 11 conditions such as early dementia that was recently reported on in a study as potentially impacting September 11 responders and other potential conditions caused by the toxins at Ground Zero.”
Board member Mariama James explained at the September 24 meeting, “over the past couple of years, the government was overly optimistic and didn’t set aside enough money to cover all the people that would become sick and dying from September 11.”
When the Health Program was launched in 2010, no policymaker could foresee the number of people who would eventually be made sick by toxic debris from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. (The Health Program currently covers 132,000 Americans in all 50 states.) For this reason, its initial budget was drained in just a few years, and the bill required reauthorization in 2015. The additional funds allocated at that time were nearly depleted by 2023, which led Congress to provide a cash infusion of $676 million at the end of last year. That funding boost appears likely to be sufficient for another four years. Absent further allocations, the WTC Health Program will need to begin turning away new applicants and curtailing services by 2028.