Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) led a bipartisan press conference Wednesday in support of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) expanding compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
The original RECA passed in 1990 with the goal of compensating Americans who had health problems, such as cancer, due to Cold War-era nuclear testing. The NDAA amendment, whose sponsors included Hawley, Lujan, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), would expand eligibility for compensation under the law to incorporate more “downwinders,” those who lived downwind of the desert tests.
The first iteration of the law covered those who were residents of Utah, Nevada and Arizona. However, it does not cover those affected by the Trinity test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., as recently dramatized in the film “Oppenheimer.” The amendment would expand eligibility to then-residents of Idaho, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Guam, and also extend eligibility to uranium miners who were exposed through 1990.
The amendment would also extend RECA, set to sunset next July, another 19 years. The measure passed the Senate this summer.
Hawley and fellow Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), also noted that tens of thousands of people in the St. Louis era are believed to have been exposed to radiation during World War II, when the region was a central hub for uranium processing and where those materials were later stored at its airport. Much of the resulting waste was later deposited in Coldwater Creek in northern St. Louis.
Many downwinders are also Native Americans and frequently encounter bureaucratic hurdles in producing the records needed to prove eligibility.
“If the government is going to create a disaster, the governments should clean it up,” Hawley said.
“We can correct this injustice in America we can help more families. We can recognize those [affected] with the respect that they have earned, whether they were in their minds working for national security purposes, or living in communities where this testing took place in the United States, we can and we will get this done,” Luján said.
Hawley repeatedly emphasized the bipartisan nature of the push, noting that the amendment passed the Senate 61-37, surpassing the 60-vote threshold for a filibuster-proof majority.
“This is something everyone should be able to get behind,” he said.
— Updated at 5:50 p.m.
