Well that's a pressure cooker of a day on Capitol Hill as we wait and wonder how this vote for healthcare plays out, the final vote is expected Sunday and Democratic house leaders are trying to convince undeclared members to vote yes. 216 votes are needed to either pass the vote or kill it. Right now 206 house members say they will vote No. Of those who say that they are against the bill, well 178 are republicans, 28 are democrats, 35 right now, undeclared.
They say they worked hard in the ruins of ground zero in 911 and sacrificed their health but is a 657 million-dollar settlement enough? In about five hours those workers will have their say with the judge. CNN’s Mary Snow has their story.
On September 11th, former New York City Police Officer Frank Maisano was among the first responders rushing to the scene. He stayed at Ground Zero for a week and then worked at the Freshkils Landfill where debris was taken.
I felt that the dust -- I had an intermittent cough, you know, but that all came to a head when I chased a suspect later on.
In January of 2004, he collapsed. Maisano had to leave the police department and now may face a lung transplant. He blames the toxic air he inhaled at Ground Zero and fault the city for a lack of protective gear.
We didn't have no protective gear. We just went down there to work, to retrieve body parts. That's what we did.
Maisano was among 10,000 plaintiffs who sued and is happy lawyers reached a settlement with the city. We asked New York City's chief attorney, Michael Cardozo, about the workers who say the city didn't do enough to provide protective gear.
The city's response and the contractor's response is, we did a heroic effort in responding and supplying respirators and that kind of issue. And each plaintiff, depending where that plaintiff worked, would have to prove the contrary.
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