After the 9/11 VCF payout reduction was announced, government officials expressed disappointment over the decision.

In mid-February, government officials announced that payouts made from the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund would be reduced. Reportedly, the money people would receive from valid claims would be decreased at least by half and in many cases as much as by 70 percent. So claimants who are awarded compensation in the future will receive a fraction of what they would have received earlier.

The Victims Compensation Fund was opened in 2011 after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The fund is designed to provide monetary compensation to those who were affected or whose family members were affected by the attacks. This fund could help pay for medical expenses, or lost wages due to injury.

The fund is $7.3 billion, and around $5 billion has already been paid out. About 21,000 claimants have received funds, while another 19,000 remain unpaid. To handle this large number of claims, officials have had to cut the amount that each person receives.

According to The Washington Post, Rupa Bhattacharyya, administrator of the fund, said that “we recognize that this is horribly unfair particularly because we have spent the balance of this program paying clams at full value, and claimants who are coming in now are going to receive less. Unfortunately, the law really leaves us no choice. This is the fairest way we could come up with to do it.”

The 9/11 VCF fund reduction has been widely covered since it was announced. Reuters noted that Bhattacharyya asserted that the $7.3 billion was widely insufficient to cover all 9/11 victims fully, and said that $12 billion would be needed to compensate all victims of the attacks fully. 

This squeeze on funds is particularly painful for victims because the number of people who were diagnosed with 9/11 related illnesses has gone up in recent years. The diseases linked to the toxins released during 9/11 were reportedly ones with long timelines, like cancer.

While the dust released during and after the attacks was first declared to be harmless, time has shown that this is far from the case. Now that more and more people are being diagnosed with 9/11-related injuries, the money that they will be able to receive to help them deal with these injuries will be greatly reduced to keep up with the numbers.

To make matters worse, the fund runs out in 2020. Though President Obama did take action to extend the fund past its original deadline to 2020 as more cases of 9/11 illnesses came to light, no further extension has been granted.

People injured in the terrorist attacks are expressing concern both over the 9/11 VCF fund reduction and the fact that the fund has a deadline at all. John Feal, a construction worker who was injured at Ground Zero, and who has become an activist in years since, said, “I’m devastated, and the 9/11 community is devastated.”

Of the 2020 deadline, Feal says that Congress “put an arbitrary deadline on illnesses that don’t have deadlines… This is un-American, unpatriotic, and inhumane.”

New York Post reports that efforts are being made to permanently extend the availability of funds, but there are many obstacles in face of this effort. According to FDNY Captain Eugene Kelty, many Congress members oppose extending the fund. He says that “it’s just that we got a lot of new people in Congress. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to forget history.”