It's absolutely outrageous and you'll pardon me if i'm not impressed in any way by Rand
Paul's fiscal responsibility virtue signaling.
Rand Paul presented tissue paper avoidance of the 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut that added
hundreds of billions of dollars to our deficit and now he stands up at the last minute after
15 years of blood sweat and tears from the 9/11 community to say that, it's all over
now, now we're going to balance the budget on the backs of the 911 first responder community.
Bret, this is about what kind of society we have at some point we have to stand up for
the people who have always stood up for us.
And at this moment in time maybe cannot stand up for themselves due to their illnesses and
their injuries.
And what Rand Paul did today in the Senate was outrageous.
He is a guy who put us in hundreds of billions of dollars in debt he was the 51st vote on
that cut and now he's going to tell us a billion dollars a year for over ten years is just
too much for us to handle?
You know there are somethings they have no trouble putting on the credit card but somehow
when it comes to the 9/11 responder community, the cops the firefighters, the construction
workers, the volunteers, the survivors, all the sudden, man we gotta go through this.
This program has already been running for five years, no fraud it was testified when
we went in from of congress the special pay master testified-- no fraud, no waste, no
abuse.
Mike Lee, we met in his office five years ago he looked us in the eye, he looked Ray
Fifer in the eye, who unfortunately is no longer with us, and said he was going to look
into it.
He is the reason why we've had to go back again for this new one and now he wants to
put another cap on it that's going to make John feel and all these other tenacious yet
ill first responders drag themselves back to Washington put their hats in their hands
and for something this country should have done 14 years ago.
It’s an abomination.
You know we asked both senators for a statement, Senators Paul office sent a statement saying
"Senator Paul is not blocking anything.
He is simply seeking to pay for it.
As with any bill Senator Paul always believes it needs to be paid for.
Senator Paul is simply offering an amendment, which other senators support, to pay for this
legislation."
Obviously after all that you've said here and attending the funeral of your college
Louis Alvarez, John Feal, that's not where you are?
Nah listen Senator Paul and Senator Lee are opportunists, they’re bottom feeders and
any statement that they come out with is uh doesn't hold water with me.
You can't cherry pick and choose when you want to be a conservative fiscal hawk.
That's just insulting to our intelligence and shame on them they lack humanity they
lack leadership and they just do this because, listen Ted Cruz, Rand Paul Mike Lee even their
own colleges don't like them, we don't like them and when we get this bill passed then
we beat them again.
And we're going to walk out and we're going to hold our chins up high and our chest out
and we're going to say that we beat Rand Paul and Mike Lee.
You know, we met Mike Lee a couple months ago, his staff promised, they swore up and
down that they were not going to get in the way of this.
Mike Lee, you're a liar.
Another thing too Bret is to remember is at what point this is either necessary of it's
not and everybody agrees that it's necessary so we're either doing this or without.
There's either need or it's not your budgetary priorities are either moved by a moral compass
or they're not.
And this is an outrageous place for them to take a stand and cause once again pain and
heartache and suffering within a community that felt so much of that over the past few
years and is going to be suffering more.
And Bret you know Bret this is-- what people see as a major defeat today and a setback
and it's just going to propel us to a bigger win and we're confident that after meeting
with Mitch McConnell that he's kept his word and he's working diligently to get this bill
on the floor for a straight up and down vote and that's what we always wanted.
The unanimous consent was easy but we want a straight up and down vote because we didn't
get it in 2010, we didn't get it in 2015 and we want to walk out watching the fruition
of our work come to an end.
It's the same song and dance they've been giving us for 14 years now.
This program has proven itself, it has shown itself to be faithful to the statute, it has
shown itself to be fair to the claimant, it's shown itself to be respectful to the taxpayers
and that's all we can ask of a program but most importantly it brings just a moments
peace to a community who suffers and continues to suffer.
This is Jon Stewart taking aim at Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee amid their
opposition to a bill that would have extended the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund until the
year 2090.
Rand Paul unilaterally stopped the legislation from the unanimous consent it needed to pass.
Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that as if in legislative session, the Senate proceed
to calendar number 153HR1327 that the bill be considered read a third time and passed.
And the motion to reconsider be considered may and be laid upon the table with no intervening
action or debate.
Mr. President-- Senator from Kentucky.
...I object.
It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country.
We have a $22 trillion debt, we're adding debt at about a trillion dollars a year.
And therefore any new spending that we are approaching any new program that's going to
have the longevity of 70, 80 years should be offset by cutting spending that's less
valuable.
We need to at the very least have this debate I will offering up an amendment if this bill
should come to the floor but until then I will object.
The Victims Compensation Fund, or VCF, provides money to those who contracted disease after
being exposed to toxic debris from the rubble on 9/11.
And whereas this would have ensured funding throughout the lives of the 9/11 First Responders,
those who ran INTO the rubble when everyone else ran away, the bill now goes back to the
Senate for a full vote.
And rest assured, it will be passed.
The legislation sailed through the House 402-12 and has a staggering 73 co-sponsors in a Senate
that isn’t able to agree on what day of the week it is.
So when it finally comes up for a full vote, it will become law.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that the 9/11 First Responders are now made to wait -- AGAIN.
The people who showed up on the darkest day in American history, the people who sacrificed
their health, and in many cases their lives, to rescue other Americans, are now made to
beg, hat in hand, yet again, because a couple Senators from deep red states suddenly decided
that they’ve rediscovered their fiscal responsibility.
The same fiscal responsibility, mind you, that conveniently disappeared when both Rand
Paul and Mike Lee voted FOR the $1.5 trillion GOP tax bill that exploded our deficit.
The tax bill that Republicans promised would pay for itself-- and didn’t.
The tax bill that Republicans promised wouldn’t just lead to stock buyback and executive salary
raises-- and did.
And yet, strangely, there was no grandstanding from these principled conservatives when they
voted to sacrifice our national debt to give themselves a tax break.
How very unexpected.
Not a word about Trump having taken a staggering 195 separate multi-million dollar taxpayer
funded golf trips to the properties he still owns and profits from.
Again, no grandstanding from our principled conservatives, and I wonder …why.
President Trump and Rand Paul playing a quick round of golf in New Jersey this weekend.
And yet, amazingly, there was no equivocation about those 9/11 first responders when both
Paul and Lee were tweeting platitudes about them.
Lee explicitly tweeted the words “we will never forget the victims of September 11th
and the heroic first responders.”
Only, this tweet was years before Twitter raised its character limit, because if there
were the full 280 characters, we’d have realized that Lee’s tweet ACTUALLY said,
“We will never forget the victims of September 11th and the heroic first responders, unless
doing so requires any financial expenditures that won’t benefit me personally, in which
case I’ll hold their lifeline hostage to balance the budget when I feel the need to
grandstand about my selectively fiscal responsibility.”
Yeah.
Those old-school tweets could be deceiving that way.
And Americans should remember this the next time anyone from the GOP tries to once again
lay claim to the idea of patriotism in this country.
Because while it’s easy to tweet empty rhetoric, actions speak leagues louder than words.
So Mike Lee and Rand Paul can go home knowing that their opposition to the VCF is the only
reason that our First Responders won’t sleep easy tonight.
And that’s a shame, because who’d have ever thought that in the face of such heroism
from those heroes on 9/11, we’d see such cowardice from a couple of Republicans in
the Senate.