GOP objecting to management of health fund for 9/11 workers

As the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee holds a hearing Tuesday on a proposed fund to cover additional health care costs for first responders to the 9/11 attacks, Senate Republicans are planning to take issue with the management of the fund, CongressDaily reports.

"Aides to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Mike Enzi said there were legitimate concerns over the fiscal management of the fund, which would be placed under the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control, and said that committee Republicans would prefer to see the funding distributed through the appropriations process. 'This should go through a regular legislative process,' said Enzi, who also said today's discussion is 'just a hearing,' signaling that fast action on the legislation is not likely in the Senate." Republicans have said there are other funds assisting 9/11 responders and that a new fund would have to "mesh" with the old systems. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., would cost $7.2 billion through fiscal year 2015, the Congressional Budget Office reports (McCarthy, 6/29).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.