Senate to vote on permanently extending 9/11 victims fund

The Senate has agreed to vote on permanently extending the 9/11 victims fund, setting up action that will put the bill on President Donald Trump's desk for his signature by next week.

After Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) insisted on amendment votes rather than pass the bill unanimously on Wednesday, Senate leaders agreed in a deal announced Thursday to allow those amendment votes in order to pass the legislation. The votes will occur this coming Wednesday or before. The House has already passed the bill.

The moment was crucial for New York's two senators, presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They gave a press conference together shortly after the deal was locked in.

"I am grateful that we now have this agreement on timing so that we can get to the floor next week and have an up-or-down vote on the 9/11 first responders and the health care they need," Gillibrand said.

"It's been a long, long, hard, hard struggle for over a decade. But now finally, finally it looks quite certain that this bill will pass the Senate, go to the president's desk and become law. And these first responders will not have to come back again," Schumer said.

Lee's amendment seeks to provide $1 billion a year to the fund for 10 years while Paul wants to offset the cost of the spending of the legislation. Schumer said Democrats will oppose both of them.

Both Lee and Paul drew some criticism for blocking an attempt to quickly pass the bill on Wednesday, but they said they weren't trying to stop the bill but just fight for amendment votes. Lee said he was concerned about the length of the bill and argued shorter bills made the 9/11 fund more responsible.

Gillibrand called Lee's amendment "unbelievably callous" because it would force Congress to pass the legislation again. She also called on the Senate "to stop these political games and pass this bill now."

But Lee retorted that he would have been fine voting on Thursday, not next week. The Senate took its last vote shortly around 1:45 p.m. and then senators quickly scattered across the country before the voting agreement could be locked in.

"This is something that we could vote on in a matter of minutes, fifteen minutes or so, and then move on to final passage. We could in fact accomplish all of this today, before we adjourn for the weekend. This is in fact what I would prefer. I think finishing our work on this bill to protect victims and first responders is worth a half hour of our time," Lee said.