Gene Madden died a few weeks ago. He was an NYPD detective from Hoboken, and he always said the honor of his life was working alongside his guys at Ground Zero, where the toxic fumes led to a cancer diagnosis in 2008.

So he put in his 20 and retired to Myrtle Beach recently. He didn't get to enjoy it long. He was 51.

Three days earlier, Ron Svec died. The FDNY vet lived in Wall Township, which gave him access to the things he loved - fishing, the Jets, and his wife of 34 years. He spent weeks with Ladder Co. 82 at Ground Zero, and then spent the last nine years of his life fighting lung and spine cancers. He was 63.

That same day, Ed Meehan died in Nanuet. The actor Denis Leary, the superb advocate for firefighters, tweeted that he was "one of the greats" - a lieutenant with Ladder 22 who lived with cancer for years, but didn't stop training the newbies at the FDNY academy until last October. He was only 59.

That was just one week, but it goes on and on, like an endless trail of tears that runs right through New Jersey.

We often forget there are tens of thousands of first responders and survivors with 9/11-related illnesses and that many die each month. The least we can do is to give them help and comfort when illness strikes, and it has struck 83,000 heroes currently enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program.

Yet hidden in fine print in President Trump's budget is something that will complicate their lives: Budget director Mick Mulvaney - who voted against reauthorization of the First Responders' health plan when he was in Congress - has reorganized the agency that oversees it, an act which Long Island Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) asserts is a "backdoor attempt to kill the program."

Currently, the program is administered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH. It is enshrined in law (the Zadroga Act), and NIOSH has earned high marks from members of both parties.

But Mulvaney's budget separates the WTC health plan from NIOSH and places the two in separate agencies. That is problematic: The WTC program and NIOSH share many employees, and that would shift resources and manpower away from the patients who need it most.

The time it will take for another government agency to get caught up on 83,000 cases would create a bureaucratic nightmare - just imagine the surgeries to be scheduled and medications to be delivered each month. There are 7,000 people in the plan with cancer alone, double what it was two years ago. As King told Newsday, they'd lose "access to all that institutional knowledge, all those doctors, all those scientists that they've been used to all along."

Given this administration's penchant for chaos, we cannot subject these fragile lives to disruptions that only Mulvaney can explain - and he hasn't said anything since the objections started.

Thirty-five members of Congress from the Tri-state area have signed a letter to Mulvaney, demanding that he withdraw his proposal. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd), whose Burlington/Ocean district suffered about 24 casualties on Sept. 11th, poignantly stated the argument for status quo in just eight words: "When we said, 'Never Forget,'" he wrote, "we meant it."

We must never forget that 168 first responders died from WTC exposure in 2017 alone. That number isn't likely to plateau anytime soon, since the latency period for asbestos-caused diseases is anywhere between 10 and 40 years.

We must also never forget that Lincoln's words are as true today as they were 150 years ago: Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure. The disrespect from a Tea Party drone like Mulvaney cannot stand.

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