Mr. President, I am deeply disappointed that my colleague has just objected to the desperately needed and urgent bill for our 9/11 first responders--a bipartisan bill that just earned over 400 votes in the U.S. House of Representatives and that has 73 cosponsors in this Chamber. Enough of the political games. Our 9/11 first responders and the entire Nation are watching to see if this body actually cares. Do we care about the men and women who answer the call of duty? When our country was attacked on 9/11/2001, the entire world looked on in shock as many people rightfully sought to get away as quickly as they could. As those towers began to crumble, there was one group of men and women--our heroes, the bravest among us--who ran the opposite way. They ran toward danger. They raced up the towers. They went into harm's way to answer the call of duty. Then, in the days and weeks that followed and the months and months that followed, life slowly began to return to normal for the rest of the country, but at Ground Zero, nothing was normal. The pile kept burning. It was smoldering. You could smell it blocks and blocks away-- 10 blocks, 20 blocks, 30 blocks away. Men and women kept going to that pile to do the very hard work of, first, trying to find survivors and then, of course, just trying to find remains and doing all the hard work of cleaning up. They dove in. They got to work. They wanted to help our country heal.…
On the recordJuly 17, 2019
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