ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – A top Democrat in the U.S. House says it will take a shift in power in Congress to ensure that legislation is finally passed to extend and expand a compensation program for people exposed to radiation after uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out by the federal government.
Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar on Tuesday joined members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation to urge voters to put more pressure on House Republican leaders to revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
With his party trying to regain majorities in Congress, the California congressman made campaign pitches to New Mexico Democrats and promised they would support the multibillion-dollar compensation program.
“I would say this is both a failure in government and a failure in leadership,” Aguilar said, referring to the House’s inaction on the legislation.
The Senate approved the project earlier this yearonly to stall in the House over concerns from some Republican lawmakers about costs. GOP supporters in the Senate asked House leadership to vote on the measure, but the bill died expires in June.
Native Americans who worked as miners, millers and uranium transporters and people whose families lived downwind of nuclear test sites are among those who argue the legislation was sidelined due to political calculations by the House majority party. and not the price.
Advocates have been pushing to expand the compensation program for decades. Front and center have been at a disadvantage 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 over decades to support US nuclear activists.
The chorus got louder last year with the box office hit “Oppenheimer.” brought new attention to the country’s nuclear history and the legacy left for years of nuclear research and bomb making.
Freshman congressman Gabe Vasquez, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that national defense spending reaches $860 billion every year.
“So when you tell me that we can’t compensate the people who suffered from pancreatic cancer, miscarriages, the horrors of nuclear fallout and the generation that suffered from it, it’s a joke to me,” he said.
Vasquez, who faces GOP challenger Yvette Herrell in her reelection bid, 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 is 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 around $2.6 billion in that time. The bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to update the law said the government is to blame for the exposure of residents and workers and should act.
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 an atomic explosion was the source of the ash that rained down on them after the detonation. This included families who lived off the land – farming, raising livestock and obtaining drinking water from cisterns.
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