Frank Pallone: “I want to speak in support of the 9/11 health provisions that are in the omnibus bill that we will be voting on…”

“I want to speak in support of the 9/11 health provisions that are in the omnibus bill that we will be voting on tomorrow. This is a major bipartisan victory. In our committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, we had the health portion of the bill, which basically provides specialized health care for those first responders and survivors of 9/11. Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell how important this is. In my own State of New Jersey, we have a clinic where we help about 5,000 mostly first responders. They need specialized health care. Their problems get more severe as time goes on. What we are doing with this legislation is making this 9/11 health program and victims compensation program permanent. It was authorized for 5 years. There was a cap on it. The cap has now been removed. We know that those first responders now will get the kind of specialized health care that they need. I cannot emphasize how important this is. {time} 1015 I want to thank my colleagues in the New Jersey delegation, the New York delegation, and the Connecticut delegation on both sides of the aisle in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. I think a lot of people think this is just a health insurance program. That is not what this is about. This is a research program that looks into those specialized diseases that many of these first responders have been impacted by, and every day, we find more rare diseases, more problems that these first responders are coming down with.…”