ALBUQUERQUE, NM — A leading Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives says a power shift in Congress is needed to ensure legislation is finally passed to expand a compensation program for people exposed to radiation following uranium mining and nuclear testing conducted by the federal government.
Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, along with members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation, urged voters Tuesday to put more pressure on Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
As his party sought to regain congressional majorities, the California congressman campaigned for Democrats in New Mexico, promising they would support the multibillion-dollar compensation program.
“I would say this is both a failure of government and a failure of leadership,” Aguilar said, referring to the House’s inaction on the legislation.
The Senate passed the bill earlier this yearonly to have it stall in the House of Representatives over concerns from some Republican lawmakers about its cost. GOP supporters in the Senate had called on House leaders to hold a vote on the measure, but the bill ended up deadlocked expires in June.
Native Americans who worked as uranium miners, millers and transporters, and people whose families lived downwind of the nuclear test sites, believe the legislation was shelved because of political calculations by the majority party in the chamber, not because of the price tag.
Advocates have pushed for decades to expand the compensation program. Front and center were downwinders in New Mexico, where government scientists and military officials dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945 as part of the top secret Manhattan Project.
Residents have made it their mission to raise awareness about the lingering effects of nuclear fallout around the Trinity Test Site in southern New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, where more than 30 million tons of uranium ore have been mined in recent decades in support of U.S. nuclear activists.
The chorus grew louder last year when the blockbuster “Oppenheimer” brought new attention to the country’s nuclear history and the legacy that remains through years of nuclear research and bomb making.
Congressman Gabe Vasquez, a New Mexico Democrat who serves on the Defense Committee, said Tuesday that national defense spending exceeds $860 billion each year.
“So when you tell me that we can’t afford to compensate people who have had pancreatic cancer, miscarriages, the horrors of nuclear fallout and the generation that suffered from it, I think that’s a joke,” he said.
Vasquez, who is running for re-election against Republican challenger Yvette Herrell, proposed that the legislation be included in a defense spending measure and that lawmakers find ways to offset the costs by saving money elsewhere.
There is still an opportunity for House leaders to “do the right thing,” he said.
The law was originally passed more than three decades ago and has raised about $2.6 billion in that time. The bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to update the law have said the government is responsible for exposing residents and workers and must take action.
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 would also have been covered.
In New Mexico, residents were not warned of the radiological dangers of the Trinity Test and did not realize that a nuclear explosion was the source of the ash that rained down on them after the detonation. This was also true for families who lived off the land—growing crops, raising livestock, and drawing their drinking water from reservoirs.