Narrower radiation compensation bill rankles advocates

Advocates of a bipartisan bill to extend and expand compensation for Americans exposed to nuclear radiation by the government are now grappling with a new wrinkle they fear could impede their efforts.

While the bill’s sponsors pressure Speaker Mike Johnson (R.-La.) to give it a House vote following its passage in the Senate, Utah’s senators have introduced separate legislation that would extend the law without expanding its coverage — a move that has drawn frustration from lawmakers and members of impacted communities who have championed the cause.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), first passed in 1990, compensates Americans exposed to radiation in their work on nuclear weapons testing or as uranium miners, as well as those who were downwind of the test site in Nye County, Nev.

Several categories of people exposed to radiation, including those downwind of the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb in the 1945 Trinity test, are not eligible for compensation, however. And the law, for which President Biden signed an extension in 2022, is set to expire in July.

In March, the Senate passed a bill sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) to extend the bill another six years and expand eligibility to radiation exposure victims in Missouri, Idaho, Montana, Guam, Colorado, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alaska, as well as people downwind of the Trinity test in Los Alamos, N.M.

While the senators are pushing for the measure to move forward in the lower chamber, Johnson has not yet announced any House action on the bill, which passed the upper chamber 69-30 with 49 Democratic and 20 Republican votes. 

In the meantime, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), both of whom voted against the earlier measure, introduced legislation in mid-April to extend RECA another two years with no coverage expansion. Lee previously introduced the two-year extension in the Senate in 2022.

A Lee spokesperson told The Hill that the primary distinction between this bill and the one passed by the Senate in April is cost, while a person familiar with Lee’s thinking said the senator is also prioritizing keeping the law in effect past the July expiration date.

Romney, who backed the two-year extension in 2022, expressed similar sentiments, telling The Hill, “Sen. Hawley’s [bill] is a $50 billion provision, and Sen. Lee’s is a small fraction of that, and is reserved [for] those individuals who have been determined to actually be suffering as a result of radiation exposure.”

Lujan expressed frustration with the notion of a narrower RECA extension that does not expand the law’s coverage, invoking Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning biopic “Oppenheimer.” The New Mexico Democrat frequently sought to use the renewed interest in the history covered by the movie in 2023 as a springboard to push the legislation.

“The question that I have for colleagues that want to introduce legislation and exclude New Mexico is, I’d invite them to go back and watch movies … like ‘Oppenheimer,’ or they can go back and read history,” he told The Hill. “And I’d like to remind them where the first bomb was tested in America. It was in New Mexico, the Trinity test site. How can that community be left out from the communities that would qualify for downwind? Answer me that.”

Hawley’s office referred The Hill to community activists working on the issue rather than offering comment on the Lee-Romney bill, but the Missouri senator has previously had sharp words for those who invoke the costs associated with expanding compensation. 

In a February meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Hawley said McConnell “brought up the cost, and I said I didn’t hear a lot of grousing about the cost when we were voting on Ukraine funding or anything else for that matter.”

In addition to the coverage expansion, the Hawley-Lujan bill includes provisions that would increase the amount of compensation available to beneficiaries for the first time since 2000. The Utah senators’ bill includes no such increase.

Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake City downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, said RECA as it currently exists “has always been flawed; it’s never been extensive enough.”

“Here in Utah, where we were basically at Ground Zero, it only covers 10 rural counties,” she told The Hill. Those lobbying to expand the law, she said, have “never had the momentum we’ve had right now,” and “it’s a more expansive bill that’s more inclusive, and that’s what we’ve been working so hard for.”

“Sen. Lee has never been supportive of that,” she added.

It’s not clear when or if Johnson will bring the Hawley-Lujan bill, which President Biden has said he would sign, to the House floor. But Dickson expressed worries that Lee and Romney’s pitch of a lower price tag could lead to action being taken on that bill while the more expansive measure languishes.

“My big worry is it’s going to override the expansion,” she said. “To me, they’re undermining the bill that just passed in the Senate. We don’t want another temporary extension.”

Dickson said that Utah’s House delegation has been responsive to downwinders’ concerns in the past, but that none of them are backing the more expansive bill, leaving those working on the issue with a feeling of betrayal.

In an email, a spokesperson for Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) told The Hill, “We have been in contact with constituents regarding RECA and know many are hoping for an expansion. Currently, our office is concerned with the impending deadline for the program. Clean reauthorizations are much less controversial and have proved much simpler to get passed. We are hopeful our reauthorization bill will be passed before Utahns lose coverage in just a few weeks, whereas we believe the current expansion bills are unlikely to be approved before the deadline.”

The Hill has reached out to Utah’s other three representatives, Reps. Blake Moore (R), John Curtis (R) and Burgess Owens (R), for comment.  

“To me it’s heartbreaking they can’t do right,” Dickson said. “When they say it costs too much, to me that’s incredibly specious when you look at the amount of money this country’s invested in nuclear weapons.”