Advocates fear compensation for radiation victims could end with defense bill deal

Advocates fear a bipartisan provision of the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that expands compensation for victims of radiation poisoning may be a casualty of the conference process.

It’s already behind in its reach: In many cases, those who could have benefited from the expansion have limited time, or are already dead.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), first passed three decades ago, compensates Americans who were exposed to radiation from atomic testing or uranium mining. The law covers people who were residents of Utah, Nevada and Arizona at the time of nuclear testing and World War II-era uranium mining. It is set to expire in May, after the Biden administration extended it for two years last summer.

However, it does not cover several states that were also on the front lines of such activity, including New Mexico, the site of the 1945 Trinity atomic bomb test, or Missouri, where nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project was stored in multiple parts of St. Louis.

A bipartisan amendment to the Senate version of the NDAA, which passed with a supermajority in August, would expand the law to cover Idaho, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Guam and Colorado, as well as extending it for a further 19 years.

The Senate amendment was not part of the House’s version of the NDAA, and amid what’s likely to be a broader battle over the bill’s final form, it’s not clear whether the amendment will make it into the conference bill.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who co-sponsored the amendment with Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), in November vowed to block any version of the NDAA that does not include it.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” Hawley told The Hill on Thursday. His colleagues, he added, are “concerned about cost … to which my response is, we seem to have unlimited sums of money to pay defense contractors and give to foreign countries. Can we not make whole the people of this nation who have been poisoned by their own government?”

Hawley did not identify by name anyone who has raised cost concerns over the amendment, but the fiscally conservative nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in October that “Congress should … consider whether to move forward with this proposal, how it could be modified or scaled back, and – importantly – how it should be fully paid for.”   

None of Hawley’s co-sponsors would commit to joining him in blocking the NDAA if the amendment is not included, but reaffirmed their support of including it in the final bill.  

“Senator Schmitt will continue to have conversations with other members that remedy the consequences of the radiation exposure that occurred right in his own backyard and have had lasting health impacts on countless St. Louis residents,” Schmitt press secretary Will O’Grady told The Hill in an email. ”The Senator met with an advocacy group on Wednesday and will continue to push for a solution for those impacted by negligence of the federal government.”  

Lujan’s office referred The Hill to a tweet sent Thursday by the New Mexico Democrat in which he said “all options are on the table” to ensure the amendment is signed into law. “We cannot turn a blind eye to those who sacrificed for our national security,” Lujan wrote.  

Crapo’s office had not responded to The Hill as of this writing.   

In the affected states, where residents have lobbied their members for years to extend and expand the compensation, the question is both time-sensitive and a matter of life and death. Maggie Billiman, a member of the Sawmill Chapter of the Navajo Nation, said that at the time of her father’s death from stomach cancer in 2001, neither of them was even aware of RECA.

Shortly before his death, Billiman’s father, Howard, a World War II-era Navajo “code talker,” asked her to research cancer treatments in hopes of finding easier ways of accessing care than his own experience.

“So that was put on me. … I just wanted to return and help my siblings [and] the whole reservation to go forward with not only the money but for RECA to be extended,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know about the bomb testing, the cancer risk.” Billiman’s family has an extended history of cancer, including her sister, who was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer.  

The effect of the radiation “is genetic; I was probably born with it,” she said, noting, “I’d never done anything like drink or smoke. I stayed away from all that.”

“I’m just hoping they can extend it or do something because this has been [going on] a long time, and Native people didn’t even know they were exposed,” she told The Hill.   

The stakes are also high for atomic veterans, those exposed to radiation as part of active duty.  

Keith Kiefer, national commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans (NAAV) and a veteran of the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll, described RECA as “one of the least bureaucratic programs I have seen in the government.” He added that atomic veterans could be forced to navigate the unfamiliar bureaucracy of Veterans Affairs care without RECA, which is administered by the Justice Department. Nuclear testing occurred on the atoll in the 1950s; cleanup took place from 1977-80.

Veterans exposed to radiation, he added, frequently suffer from cancers that make a full-time job difficult or impossible, making the RECA compensation that much more important.   

Atomic veterans, he said, are an important part of illustrating the stakes of the fight, because while senators like Luján and Hawley are responding to specific needs of their constituents, atomic veterans may live anywhere.

The NAAV has also called for an expansion of RECA eligibility to include veterans affected by three cleanup sites: the Enewetak Atoll islands, a 1968 fire onboard a bomber carrying nuclear weapons over Greenland, and a 1966 bomber crash in Palomares, Spain. The amendment passed by the Senate does not include those veterans.

On a call with reporters Monday, Hawley said negotiations were ongoing but expressed frustration at what he said has been their emphasis on cost and offsets rather than a “moral imperative” to provide compensation. 

“I think the idea that we need to come forward and show exactly why we even need this program to begin with, which I have to say has in the attitude of some of the negotiators, I think is misplaced and frankly a little offensive,” Hawley said. Despite this, he said, the proponents of the amendment had submitted potential budgetary offsets to the cost of the reauthorization and expansion. “We have done everything we have been asked to do,” he said.