Advocates call on Johnson to introduce broader radiation exposure bill next week

A coalition of community activists called on House leadership to take up a broader reauthorization of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) scheduled a vote on a more limited extension next week.

RECA, which compensates Americans exposed to radiation by nuclear testing and uranium mining, is set to expire this summer at the end of a two-year extension. On Tuesday, Johnson scheduled a vote for the first week of June on legislation that would extend RECA another two years and would not expand eligibility.

A separate bill, sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would extend the law for more time and add several states and territories to its eligibility, including Missouri, Idaho, Montana, Guam, Colorado, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alaska, as well as Americans downwind of the 1945 Los Alamos, N.M., Trinity atomic bomb test.

In a letter first shared with The Hill by Hawley’s office, advocates urged Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to instead introduce the bill from Hawley and Luján, which passed the Senate by a more than 2-to-1 margin in April.

Signatories of the letter include national and local organizations such as Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Idaho Downwinders, Just Moms STL, the National Association of Atomic Veterans and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, as well as Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and Speaker Crystalyne Curley.

“We have prayed for justice, traveled countless times to Washington DC to tell our stories, held press conferences, held community meetings, attended Congressional hearings. We have also held bake sales to raise the money to attend our cancer treatments, held our loved ones’ hands at their hospital bedside, and held too many funerals to count,” they wrote.

Hawley has vocally criticized his Republican colleagues, Utah Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, for introducing the smaller bill, while Lee and Romney have defended it as less costly. Missouri Reps. Cori Bush (D) and Ann Wagner (R) have also vowed to vote against any RECA extension that does not include Missouri.