The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt / States Newsroom)
Dozens of groups from 17 states and territories, including Utah, are urging Congress to reauthorize payments to downwinders before the end of the year.
On Tuesday, Congress entered a lame-duck session, the period in between Election Day and the start of new congressional terms.
And before new lawmakers are sworn in, advocates are hoping the House will vote on a bill that passed the Senate earlier this year to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, which offers payments to people sickened by nuclear weapons testing, known as downwinders.
Congress already has a lot on its plate — before Dec. 20, it needs to pass new spending bills to avoid a government shutdown; it needs to pass an annual defense bill; and it will likely need to replenish the FEMA account in wake of recent hurricanes.
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The House needs to accomplish all that in just 17 days. But advocates are hoping it can also schedule a vote on S.3853, a bill sponsored by Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, which passed the Senate in March after a 69-30 vote.
“This year, Congress failed us when it failed to improve RECA and allowed it to expire. But it’s not too late to make it right: pass S.3853 now,” reads an open letter to Congress, signed Wednesday by groups from all over the country, including Utah-based Downwinders, Inc., Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, Latter-day Saint Earth Stewardship, Utah Downwinders and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
In addition to Utah, groups from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Guam, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Navajo Nation, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington all signed the letter.
Originally passed in 1990, RECA compensated people diagnosed with cancer if they lived in certain counties near above-ground nuclear testing sites in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Advocates say the program never went far enough. Studies show that most of the Western U.S. was exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, yet for residents in Utah, only 10 counties were covered.
In 2022, Congress passed a bill extending RECA by two years, intent on using that window to expand and improve the program. But reforms never came and in June, RECA expired after Congress failed to extend it.
Despite lapse in compensation for downwinders, there are still more than 1,000 pending claims
“While we wait for Congress to fix this flawed program, people are getting sicker, and people are dying. We cannot afford to wait again. We cannot be asked to accept more cancers, more deaths, more bankruptcies in our communities while Congress goes back on its promises,” the letter reads.
Hawley’s bill would give RECA a major facelift. Called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, it would increase how much compensation downwinders could receive, expand eligibility for certain uranium workers, and widen the current definition of an “affected area” to include all of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Guam. It would also cover parts of Hawley’s district near St. Louis, where creek water was contaminated by radiation during nuclear weapons development.
But the House has been wary of the bill’s price tag — Utah Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy in October told reporters that it likely won’t get a vote.
“That adds a lot of new costs. So that bill won’t come up for a vote in the House. The house will not take up a bill that has that much unpaid liability,” said Maloy, calling out the provision that includes Hawley’s district.
“We can’t reauthorize it currently because of a Senate bill that ties radiation exposure in Utah from mushroom clouds, together with a superfund site in Missouri,” Maloy said.
In the letter penned on Wednesday, the groups pushed back on the notion that the House should ax certain locations that would be eligible for compensation under Hawley’s bill.
“Some have callously said that we should kick some communities out of our legislation for the sake of political expediency. But we are not willing to turn our backs on our dying friends and loved ones in other parts of the country, and Congressmembers who ask us to do so should be ashamed,” the letter reads. “There is no fiscal excuse not to support justice for all of our communities.”
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