"These stories hit you up front," says the senator's western New York regional director. The staffer says the senator was so outraged she charged the Buffalo office with documenting as many cases as possible. It now has a stack of about 200. Early on, Clinton tried pressuring agency heads to fix problems. In May 2003, for example, she pushed for a provision calling for NIOSH and the Labor Department to file a report with Congress, explaining the delays in processing claims at Bethlehem, as well as other New York facilities. The measure passed; the report has yet to be drafted. Then came the letters. In December 2003, she wrote to President Bush, calling on him to implement long-ignored legal requirements that would help Bethlehem claimants. "The longer the Administration delays," she wrote, the "more workers will die without having their claim resolved." Twelve months later, she issued a statement demanding NIOSH review its methods. The NIOSH audit, she said, "clearly indicates that claims that have been denied need to be re-evaluated. . . These days, Clinton has come to believe that the program is broken, her staff says, and that legislation is the only way to fix it. She's set to introduce a bill that would make it easier for Bethlehem claimants to get paid. The measure would set minimum standards for records needed to evaluate claims. Under the bill, employees who did nuclear-weapons work at plants without such records—as is the case at Bethlehem—would join a "special exposure cohort . . ." Because the measure mandates spending, Clinton's staff says, it won't be attractive during a time of huge deficits and tax cuts. . . For now, all the Bethlehem families can do is wait. Many, like Dorothy Jaworski of West Seneca, see the senator's bill as the only source of hope, the only way they'll be able to collect what they deserve. Jaworski got a December 2003 letter from the Labor Department announcing she qualified for the $150,000 because her late husband "had sustained leukemia and pancreatic cancer in the performance of his duty," only to have the offer rescinded, Who, exactly, has confidence in and supports employee Larry Elliott’s and his “WE” cohort’s inappropriate and baseless opinions? USHHS Secretary Mike Leavitt should compile and release a public disclosure that lists any of
