What Does It Take to Get the US Congress to Do the Right Thing?

What Does It Take to Get the US Congress to Do the Right Thing?

 Dogged Persistence & a Late-Night Celeb

 By   Shlomo Maital   

John Feal hugging Jon Stewart

     After 9/11, many many of the responders and site-workers fell ill, as the toxic materials of the wreckage destroyed their lungs, livers and other organs. It’s hard to believe, but the Federal Government has been criminally slow to replenish the fund that helped pay for their medicine and care.

       On July 23, the Senate passed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund reauthorization bill. It will help first responders pay for health care through 2092. President Trump signed the bill.  

   Republican Senator Rand Paul, who voted for Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, creating a $1 trillion deficit, voted against the bill, citing fiscal irresponsibility.

Well done, Senator. Make us proud. Make America great again.

       Here is what it takes to get the US Congress to do the obvious right thing.

         It takes John Feal. For the past 15 years, he has organized trips to Washington, hundreds of them, by ill, injured and dying responders, through his FealGood foundation. Feal is a demolition construction worker, who was injured while clearing rubble at Ground Zero and had part of his foot amputated. He has tried to persuade Congress to do the right thing since 2004.

         And it takes Jon Stewart. Born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, Stewart’s The Daily Show was for my money the funniest, most biting satire on television, for almost 20 years, since it began in 1999.  

           Here is how The Daily Beast’s Michael McAuliff describes how one dogged persistent citizen, Feal, enlisted a celeb, Stewart, and against all the odds – everyone said there was no chance to pass the bill before Congress went on vacation – got it done. Feal knew Stewart, because Feal had been on The Daily Show.

   “….when it came time to talk to lawmakers about the next bill reauthorization, [Feal] didn’t want Stewart to just read a statement he’d prepared with guidance from Hill staffers.     He wanted Stewart to speak purely from the heart, so he primed him.    He gave him a note in the morning about how much Pfeifer [a 9/11 first-responding firefighter who died as a result of the toxicity] and Stewart’s friendship meant to him. Just before going into the hearing room, Feal and former FDNY firefighter Kenny Specht presented the comedian with the fire coat Pfeifer had worn on his first job. Feal had bought it at a charity fundraiser the night before. He had dozens of responders sign it as a sign of thanks.  

   “I knew I was getting to him. I knew he was just a bowl of Jello,” Feal said.   In the hearing, Stewart was scheduled to go last. And as the proceedings progressed, Feal kept working on Stewart, pointing to the packed audience and empty chairs of representatives.    “He was just festering. I said, ‘Put the piece of paper away, and do what you do best,’” Feal recalled. “I think that moment was where we changed course. I think that’s where we took matters into our own hands. And I saw a window where we could get this done before the August recess, and I knew we didn’t have to wait until November, December like everyone else wanted.”

   Stewart’s talk went viral. He tore a strip off the Congressional representatives, chastising their utter indifference. “Your indifference cost these men and women their most valuable commodity: time. It’s the one thing they’re running out of”.   He was visibly emotional, and close to tears of rage.

   So what does it take today to get the US Congress to do the right thing? It takes one dogged, determined citizen, who somehow can enlist a celeb, who explodes spontaneously in righteous anger, at an outrageous display of indifference, by members of Congress who simply were not there. And media who helped the celeb’s talk go viral, playing it hundreds of times.

       Even stone-age fossil Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could not resist it.

       So, how often will Congress do the right thing in future?  

       It seems to me the Babylonians invented the zero for us, so we could answer that question precisely.   Because, how often will the Feal-Stewart duo recur?