Rep. Anthony Weiner Tells Imus to Get Angry. Thanks, Congressman.

Asked how he felt about seeing footage of himself freaking out on the floor of the House of Representative last week, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) said he had every reason to be angry that Rep. Peter King (R-NY) did little to persuade his fellow Republicans to pass of a health care bill for 9/11 first responders.

“But this isn’t about me, or Peter King,” said Weiner. “We’re nine years in, and people that came to New York to dig with their hands at Ground Zero from all around the country, 900 of them have died since September 11 because we haven’t provided health care for them, and they’ve been waiting a very long time.”

Much of the criticism levied at Weiner and the Democrats has been over their decision to require a two-thirds majority to pass the bill, rather than a simple majority, which they would have easily achieved. Weiner told Imus that the two-thirds process is used all the time for non-controversial bills, which this one should have been.

“Even if we made it a 95 percent passage it bill, it still should have passed,” he said, and chalked much of his anger up to people like Congressmen Joe Barton saying that firefighters are trained to go into dangerous situations, and should not require extra care.

“Peter King, rather than turn to his colleagues who said those outrageous things and call them out on it, turned to Democrats,” said Weiner. “And he gave all those Republicans cover, and essentially made it another partisan bill in Washington.”

King, the bill’s co-sponsor, claimed the Democrats decided to use the two-thirds vote so that no amendments could be made, but Weiner protested that his Party was merely hoping to expedite the bill’s passage.

“We wanted to get this done and get it to the Senate before the ninth anniversary of September 11,” he said. “This had gone through months and months of hearings and debate, lots of amendments have been offered by Republicans, many of them were accepted.”

As he explained again the genesis of his anger over King making something like a 9/11 health care bill a political issue, Weiner suggested Imus should be upset too because, well, everything makes him angry.

Including, it turns out, Weiner dodging the question of why the Democrats don’t simply change the voting procedure back to requiring a simple majority. “We’re going to do everything necessary to get it passed,” Weiner said, and suggested Imus help out by persuading 21 Republicans to switch their vote to yes.

Told that someone like Sean Hannity might be more helpful in that pursuit, Weiner said he doesn’t talk down that far. When Imus insisted Hannity was a better person than Weiner thinks, Weiner said, “That’s definitely true.”

-Julie Kanfer