Weiner tells a whopper about World Trade Center health bill

On Dec. 22, 2010, after an eight-year battle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated New York’s congressional delegation for finally securing legislation to provide health care and compensation to sickened 9/11 rescue and recovery workers.

The speaker singled out Manhattan Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler as well as Republican Rep. Pete King of Long Island. Her praise was well deserved. Maloney, Nadler and King had worked long and hard to win passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

Unmentioned by Pelosi on that day of triumph was former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who then represented a Queens-Brooklyn district and had held the seat for more than a decade. Pelosi meant no disrespect in passing over Weiner. She was merely reflecting the truth that he played a comparatively small role in a fight that stretched across both terms of President George W. Bush and into the Obama administration.

Now, after sexting himself into resigning from office, Weiner runs for mayor. He announced his candidacy with a video that boasts of his effectiveness in Congress with the claim that he “fought to get sick 9/11 responders the help they deserved.”

Weiner’s claim is true only in the most literal sense. It also gives the false impression that he was at the forefront of a legislative drive that was critical to New York.

At times, Maloney and Nadler drafted Weiner along with others into pressing the cause, and he was most active as the battle neared its culmination. But so was every other member of the New York delegation, none of whom has shown the brass to hype lesser contributions, valuable as they were, into a signature accomplishment.

The record is clear that Maloney took up the issue months after 9/11, when the consequences of inhaling the toxic cloud over Ground Zero were far from certain. Nadler and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton also led the charge, and stuck with it.

Maloney sponsored every version of the bill introduced in the House, twisted arms, wrote letters to the White House and held press conferences to focus attention on the needs of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who labored on and around The Pile after the terrorist attack.

Her official website includes an archive of correspondence and news releases that record who did what in relation to major developments between August 2002, when Maloney and Clinton first broached the idea of federal assistance for 9/11 rescuers, and December 2010.

The documents include 135 releases that liberally credit work done by Clinton and Nadler, along with colleagues including Sen. Chuck Schumer, former Rep. Vito Fossella (R-S.I.), Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), former Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-Hudson Valley) and former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.). Weiner made the cut in a grand total of six releases over the course of eight years.

Along the way, Maloney wrote and made public 27 letters calling for actions on WTC health issues. Often, she rounded up fellow representatives as signatories. Weiner put his name to 14.

As for his efforts in helping to close the deal, Weiner is best remembered for furiously and counterproductively excoriating King, one of the legislation’s champions, on the House floor. John Feal, a Long Island construction supervisor who lobbied vigorously for the Zadroga bill, placed Weiner in the “second-tier fighting.”

Weiner is now pitching for the mayoralty as a man who learned from the terrible mistakes he made in sleazily tweeting and, worse, lying about it. While politicians will puff up their résumés, this is hardly how someone in Weiner’s position wants to go about rebuilding trust.