One of the clever aspects of modern day lawmaking is creating great law names. The Patriot Act is a great example. Who can oppose legislation called the Patriot Act? Last week during the lame duck session the Democrats sponsored a bill to boost the medical and financial aid to heroic Ground Zero workers. Who could possibly oppose such a bill? Well, no one really. Despite outcries from journalistic giant Jon Stewart and other liberals there really wasn’t a controversy. It’s just the same old shallow understanding that plagues most liberals. The devil is always in the details.
Originally, the ten-year cost of the legislation would have been either $7.4 billion (House-passed version) or $6.2 billion (amended Senate version). The ten-year cost of the compromise will be only $4.2 billion. Originally, the bill would have cost billions more beyond the ten-year window. Those added costs were jettisoned entirely from the compromise. Originally, the re-opened 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) — which closed in 2003 — would have stayed in operation through 2031. Now the VCF will be shuttered — permanently — in 2016. Originally, legislative loopholes would have permitted certain attorneys to gobble up a massive chunk of 9/11-related settlements. The compromise imposes a rigid ceiling on trial-lawyer fees, limiting them to 10 percent of the total amount awarded and giving the VCF “special master” authority to slash fees that he considers disproportionate. Originally, the bill suffered from a dearth of accountability controls. The compromise includes muscular safeguards against waste and abuse.
The nuts and bolts of the bill aren’t quite as sexy as “the evil GOP wants to screw the 9/11 workers!” Senator Coburn was raked over the coals for simply trying to make the bill better. The fact that he was able to make changes to the bill is a heroic achievement. To get an idea how brain dead the left’s echo chamber is becoming check out this New York Times article about Jon Stewart.
Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?
And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?
Let the myth making begin! Jon Stewart is like Ed Murrow because he drummed up a bunch of hysteria about a bill he didn’t understand. If the left is looking to Jon Stewart for leadership and education about issues they may be gone forever. It’s funny that Stewart went to Washington just a few months ago to bitch and complain about the tone of the public debate and now he’s part of the problem. The 9/11 bill ultimately passed, but there was no reason it had to pass in the lame duck session. There will be laws made after the 111th Congress that will be just as bad despite what liberals believe.
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