The U.S. House of Representatives adjourned on Thursday without a vote to renew and extend a federal program helping families suffering from radiation-related illnesses developed in the earliest days of America’s nuclear weapons programs. Without specific authorization for the program, benefits for those already covered may be in jeopardy when Congressional authorization for the program expires on Friday, the bill’s sponsors say.
In a rare bi-partisan vote earlier this year, Senators passed legislation to renew the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) which provides screening and healthcare benefits for individuals by radiation exposure from the Manhattan Project and the industrial programs supporting it in the middle of the last century.
RECA has provided compensation and healthcare for individuals and descendents of those who worked in the programs supporting the development of America’s nuclear arsenal. But many New Mexicans, including Navojo uranium mine workers and residents of the Tularosa Basin near the Trinity Test site in southern New Mexico, known locally as “downwinders”were excluded from compensation and help for years.
The Senate-passed legislation, sponsored by U.S. Senators Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and Josh Howley (R-MO), renewed the program for existing beneficiaries and extended access to New Mexico’s uncompensated victims. The program was set to expire this week unless the U.S. House of Representatives passes the bill and sends it to the president for signature. Supporters blasted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for adjourning the US House today without scheduling a vote.
“I am disappointed that Speaker Johnson sent the House home without taking action on RECA before the sunset date, putting the coverage and compensation of American families at risk. Advocates from communities nationwide traveled to Washington to make their voices heard, share their painful stories, and fight for this program. I was proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” Senator Luján said Thursday after the House adjourned without action on the Senate bill.
All three of New Mexico’s Congress members, all Democrats, have supported the Senate bill but supporters have been unsuccessful in convincing House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to schedule a vote.
Tina Cordova, an organizer with the Tularosa Downwinders Consortium, was blunt about the consequences of inaction in a statement last month about House inaction. “To have sent people into the mines without adequate safety gear is inexcusable. To have allowed people to live as close as 12 miles to a test site without warning or evacuation is inexcusable. It is a total moral failure for the US government to walk away from responsibility for the extensive harm that was done, and continues.”
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich also shared tough words for Speaker Johnson on Friday as the program was set to expire. “Shame on Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans for letting RECA expire. The Tularosa downwinders and uranium miners have experienced the real-life costs of radiation exposure for generations. They need RECA expanded now— not a lecture on the ‘costs’ of expansion from heartless House Republicans. This isn’t over. I will continue to fight to pass a long overdue expansion and extension of RECA this Congress.”