ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A top Democrat in the U.S. House says it will take a shift of power in Congress to ensure that legislation is finally passed to extend and expand a compensation program for people exposed to radiation following uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out by the federal government.
Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar joined Tuesday with members of New Mexico congressional delegation to call on voters to put more pressure on Republican House leaders to revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
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With his party seeking to win back majorities in Congress, the California congressman made campaign pitches for New Mexico Democrats and vowed they would support the multibillion-dollar compensation program.
“I would say this is both a failure in government and this is a failure in leadership,” Aguilar said, referencing House inaction on the legislation.
The Senate passed the bill earlier this year, only for it to stall in the House over concerns by some Republican lawmakers about cost. GOP supporters in the Senate had called on House leadership to take up a vote on the measure, but the act ended up expiring in June.
Native Americans who worked as uranium miners, millers and transporters and people whose families lived downwind from nuclear testing sites have been among those arguing that the legislation was sidelined due to political calculations by the chamber's majority party rather than the price tag.
Advocates for decades have been pushing to expand the compensation program. Front and center have been downwinders in New Mexico, where government scientists and military officials dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945 as part the top secret Manhattan Project.
Residents have made it their mission to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Test Site in southern New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, where more than 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activists.
The chorus grew louder over the past year as the blockbuster “Oppenheimer” brought new attention to the country’s nuclear history and the legacy left behind by years of nuclear research and bomb making.
Freshman Congressman Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that national defense spending tops $860 billion every year.
“So when you tell me that we can’t afford to compensate people who have suffered through pancreatic cancer, miscarriages, the horrors of nuclear fallout and the generation that have suffered from it, it is a joke to me,” he said.
Vasquez, who is facing GOP challenger Yvette Herrell in his bid for reelection, suggested that the legislation be included in a defense spending measure and that lawmakers find ways to offset the cost by saving money elsewhere.
There's still an opportunity for House leaders to “do the right thing,” he said.
The law was initially passed more than three decades ago and has paid out about $2.6 billion in that time. The bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to update the law has said that the government is at fault for residents and workers being exposed and should step up.
The proposed legislation would have added parts of Arizona, Utah and Nevada to the program and would have covered downwinders in New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Guam. Residents exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky also would have been covered.
In New Mexico, residents were not warned of the radiological dangers of the Trinity Test and didn’t realize that an atomic blast was the source of the ash that rained down upon them following the detonation. That included families who lived off the land — growing crops, raising livestock and getting their drinking water from cisterns.