What it means in practice to teach the next generation to ‘never forget’

It’s been 21 years since 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes, murdered 2,977 Americans and injured 25,000 more.

That means children who were born after 9/11 or were too young when the attacks happened are now of drinking age, soon to be graduating college, and entering into adulthood. They are voting, climbing the corporate ladder, seeking public office and, in the cases of Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., all of whom were pre-teens at the time of the attacks, serving in the U.S. Congress.

It also means that the courageous men and women who responded first to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have either already retired or will in the next several years. Similarly, the men and women of our armed services, the uniformed heroes who spent two decades at war in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, are fast approaching retirement.

According to the Center for Naval Analysis, most military officers retire between the ages of 41 and 45, meaning that even those who enlisted as teenagers and twenty-somethings in the immediate after-math of 9/11 will reach average retirement age within the next five years.

Studies show that 9/11 first responders and clean-up crew members were exposed to a wide variety of toxins and hazards, and now face significantly higher risks of cancer and respiratory diseases as a result. Many have already died of these aftereffects of the attack and cleanup.

While Congress finally took action in 2015 to create the World Trade Center Health Program, increased costs of health care and a greater number of applicants seeking care means the program is underfunded by approximately $3 billion and will need to ration, limit or deny care as soon as 2025.

The funding challenges are likely to get worse as legislators in New York recently proposed legislation to mandate that thousands of civilians who worked on cleaning up the World Trade Center site be sent additional notifications of their eligibility and benefits. The legislation is the right thing to do, and should be passed, but it will exacerbate the funding problem.

The Department of Veterans Affairs will face similar budget shortfalls. To its credit, Congress has tried in earnest to keep up with ballooning costs at the VA, increasing the budget more than six-fold in the past 20 years. As a result, the VA’s annual allocation is greater than the combined budgets of the Department of State, Department of Justice, the US Agency for International Development, the CIA and the NSA. In fact, the only department with a discretionary budget larger than the VA is the Department of Defense.

But even such exponential growth in funding is unlikely to keep pace with the rapidly growing costs of health care for the 4.1 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are quickly approaching the ages where health concerns are likely to become more pronounced and more chronic — especially among combat veterans.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this editorial. Two diverging demographics. A generation that can’t directly remember the attack or the mistakes of the subsequent wars is living with the consequences of those wars and an unstable Middle East. They are also gaining the social, political and economic power to shape policy priorities moving forward. Simultaneously, the generation that responded to the attacks and fought much of those wars is retiring and facing ever-increasing health care needs.

Neither is to blame for the budget woes we’re facing. People who weren’t alive or barely aware 21 years ago didn’t get a voice in our government’s response to 9/11. But they are now saddled with the costs. And teenagers and young adults who joined the military in the aftermath of 9/11 couldn’t reasonably be expected to know that they were signing up for the longest and most expensive continuous war effort in our nation’s history. They just knew that their fellow Americans had been attacked, terrorized and murdered. They knew they wanted to hit back, do their patriotic duty and defend the country.

Yet despite the fact that they didn’t create the situation we’re in, they are now responsible for finding a resolution — as are all of us.

For those of us who were alive and old enough to remember 9/11, it is our responsibility to share our memories of what life was like before the attacks, how the attacks changed so many aspects of our lives overnight, and the gravity of our nation’s mistakes in response to the attacks. It is our responsibility to share the stories, share the emotions, share the mistakes and teach the next generation the lessons we learned to ensure that just as we swore back then, we, as a nation, will never forget. And it is our responsibility to be advocates for those civilians, soldiers and first responders who bore the brunt of the fallout and ensure that funding for programs like the World Trade Center Health Program and the Department of Veterans Affairs does not run out.

In other words, while today is a day to remember those lost on 9/11, it is also a day to remember those who survived, those who still survive, those for whom the story of 9/11 is not yet finished. For them, we call on Congress to fully fund the World Trade Center Health Program today, and to start making a plan now for how to keep the Department of Veterans Affairs solvent and sustainable for generations to come.