Mayor, responders urge Zadroga bill passage

New York City first responders and Mayor Michael Bloomberg gathered at City Hall Monday to urge Congress to approve the new version of the Zadroga health bill.

"It's a vote on whether we should stand by those who stood by America in its hour of greatest need," Bloomberg said in the Blue Room.

"It's a vote on whether we should fulfill our obligation to the men and women in uniform, and in hard hats, whom we rightly call heroes.

"The Senate has a full week ahead of it, and it should not adjourn until it passes this bill," he said.

The Senate as early as Tuesday could take up a bill that New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, hope will attract enough Republican votes for passage.

A previous version passed the House but failed to get a vote in the Senate this month.

The new Senate bill trims the cost to $6.2 billion from $7.4 billion over 10 years. It also would shift the cost of funding responders' health care and compensation from a corporate tax to an excise tax on government purchases of material overseas.

GOP senators had objected to the use of a corporate tax.

The Senate plans to consider the Zadroga bill after it completes work on an arms-reduction treaty with Russia, said Regan Lachapelle, a spokeswoman for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

New York-area first responders were scheduled to travel to Washington and appear at a news conference Tuesday with Gillibrand and Schumer to urge Senate passage.

The new provision in the 9/11 bill would impose a 2 percent excise fee on goods or services sold to the U.S. government by a foreign-based corporation or an individual based in a country that isn't a member of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement, according to a bill summary from Gillibrand's office.

"The primary target would be China, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Brazil," said David T. Ralston Jr., a Washington-based partner with Foley & Lardner Llp who works in procurement law. "Those are the leading countries that provide worldwide goods and services and are not signatories to an international trade agreement to the U.S." - News service reports