Disgusting panderers of the day: Maddow, Rudy, Scarborough, Dems

The glaring headline at Maddow’s blog reads (via):

Republicans vs. 9-11 heroes

About the 9/11 health responders bill, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and MSDNC’s Joe Scarborough were quoted as saying:

With just hours left in the 111th Congress, Republican lawmakers find themselves the target of ire and scorn from the most unlikely of adversaries: the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the burning twin towers on Sept. 11 nearly a decade ago and worked at the site for months afterward.

That predicament crystallized Tuesday when Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor of New York during the attacks, condemned his fellow Republicans as being on the wrong side of “morality” and “obligation” for failing to support legislation to provide medical benefits for the first responders.

“This should not be seen as a Democratic or Republican issue,” Mr. Giuliani, a Republican who ran for president in 2008, said on a Fox News affiliate. “It shouldn’t even be seen as a fiscal issue. It’s a matter of morality, of obligation.”

[…]

On Wednesday morning, the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, called the G.O.P.’s opposition to the bill “a terrible mistake” for the party.

“It’s a terrible, terrible mistake to be seen as opposing relief for 9/11 heroes,” he said. “This is one of those times when you get so wrapped up in the game that you forget to look and see what’s happening. Here, the Republicans, whether they know it or not, look horrible.”

You can always count on the MSM’s favorite “Republicans” to throw those who are trying to be fiscally responsible under the bus when it’s politically convenient. Oddly enough, it’s Republicans like Scarborough who blasted the GOP all during the Bush administration for their lack of fiscal restraint. What’s changed? Oh yeah – Scarborough is now thoroughly relishing his role as the David Brooks of the 24-7 network news beat.

Most disgusting of all is this video, put out by Senate Democrats, painting the GOP as “abandoning” the 9-11 first responders after so readily embracing them in the immediate aftermath of 9-11:

Democrats – and some moderate Republicans – absolutely have no shame. None whatsoever.

Why was there resistance from a few Republicans in the Senate to the First Responders health bill? Memo to pandering morons on the left: It had nothing to do with wanting to “abandon” those who rushed to the towers on 9-11 and in the days after to help with the rescue/recovery/cleanup. The National Review editors wrote earlier this month:

The Senate will soon vote on legislation that would establish a new government-run health-care program with insufficient oversight controls, create a bonanza for trial lawyers, cost a minimum of $11.6 billion, and be funded primarily through a significant tax hike on U.S.-based companies.

Of course, that’s not how the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act is being sold.

On a surface level, the bill — which passed the House in September, over the resistance of most Republicans — may appear relatively uncontroversial: How could anyone oppose giving medical and financial benefits to the heroic first responders who suffered injury or illness while saving lives or cleaning up debris at Ground Zero? Unfortunately, the issues at stake aren’t nearly that simple.

After 9/11, Congress rolled out a bevy of initiatives designed to address the health maladies of emergency workers affected by the World Trade Center attacks. The largest such initiative, run by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), has allocated $475 million to the relevant medical-care providers. There’s just one problem: Nobody — not even NIOSH director John Howard — can account for how all the grant money has been spent. The program is bedeviled by hopelessly inadequate supervision, which has led to rampant waste and, quite possibly, serious fraud.

Rather than tackle these deficiencies and implement robust safeguards against the misuse of federal funds, the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act would effectively put the program on steroids — without clarifying its previous expenditures or correcting its severe administrative flaws. The opportunities for abuse would mushroom. We’re not opposed to a reasonable funding increase for the NIOSH scheme, provided its structural defects are fixed. But we are opposed to a new health-care entitlement that would lack proper accountability mechanisms and unleash a torrent of wasteful spending.

Read the whole thing to get the full picture of the bill of goods Democrats have successfully sold to the American people via using emotional arguments to tug on people’s heartstrings rather than engage their minds on the costs associated, lack of oversight, and how Washington, DC (including Republicans) NEVER “abandoned” the 9-11 first responders. Never.

What else makes my blood boil about this? We all remember how the Democrats went ballistic during the Bush administration at even the slightest mention of the idea of Republicans – especially President Bush – considering putting even just a few seconds of 9-11 footage in any campaign ads. Such footage, they (and their helpers in the MSM) argued at the time, would be exploiting the memory of all who perished on 9-11.

Calling these guys “hypocrites” just doesn’t seem to quite cover the depth of their duplicity, does it?

We can all thank Senator Coburn (R-OK) for working out a compromise with pandering Democrats like Reid and others, a compromise which made the bill substantially less expensive (to the tune of $2 billion) – with some accountability measures put in place – than it had been before.

Democrats have paid lip service for the last 4 years about “bipartisanship” in Washington, DC, and how we need more of it. Coburn was “blocking” the bill because he wanted changes in the bill that would have made it more fiscally responsible, wouldn’t benefit people it didn’t need to, and would provide for some accountability on down the line. He negotiated a deal with his colleagues in the Senate in a bipartisan fashion, and the rest is history. For Senate Democrats, lead by Majority “Leader” Harry Reid, to suggest that Coburn, who has made it his life’s work to help others in his role as a physician, is “abandoning” the 9-11 first responders and their health concerns is both despicable and repugnant. Not only that, but the lies being put out there by the left about how the government has supposedly “ignored and forgotten” the firefighters and police officers who worked at the WTC after 9-11 deserve swift rebuttals by the so-called “fact checkers” in the MSM.

Yeah, I know. When hell freezes over, and all that.

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