RECA supporters revive fight a year after expiration, eyeing Trump spending bill
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A year after it expired, lawmakers and advocates are renewing their fight to bring back compensation for people sickened by radiation exposure.
Advocates of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act gathered Tuesday with lawmakers to discuss their efforts how compensation for uranium mine workers and downwinders could make its way into President Donald Trump’s spending bill.
Congress renewed RECA multiple times after President George H.W. Bush signed it into law in 1990. The U.S. Senate voted 69-30 last year to extend it and expand it to include downwinders in New Mexico, people who worked in the state’s uranium mines after 1972 and their families.
Once it arrived in the U.S. House, it came to a halt after Speaker Mike Johnson expressed concern with the cost and never brought it to a vote. That caused RECA to expire.
Recently, the House passed a major spending bill dubbed by President Trump as his “big, beautiful bill” of budget cuts and savings. However, an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit.
“For Republicans to claim fiscal responsibility, it’s hard for me to fathom that… During the conversations with the passing of the radiation exposure compensation act with advocates, we put ideas on the table to address all questions that were posed by House Republicans at the time,” Democratic New Mexico U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan said.
Cost isn’t the only thing lawmakers are pointing out about RECA. On the campaign trail, Trump touted energy independence under his administration. Part of that means the possibility of reopening mines to increase uranium production in the U.S., including in New Mexico – and Utah where the U.S. Department of Interior greenlit production to begin again at a mine.
A member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Democratic New Mexico U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich believes RECA can help the president hit that goal.
“You can’t expect communities to embrace new mining if you haven’t fixed the problems you created 50, 60 years ago. I don’t think that’s an argument against RECA, I think it’s an argument for RECA,” Sen. Heinrich said.
Democratic New Mexico U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez said Tuesday that House Republicans have personally expressed to her support for RECA. In fact, she says RECA would pass if they went public with their support. The congresswoman said she plans to bring RECA to the floor and call out those representatives when the spending bill comes back to the House.
Advocate Tina Cordova comes from a family sickened for generations by radiation exposure. She hopes lawmakers will see what she describes as the bigger picture.
“Our government has never put a line item in their military budget or the nuclear budget that addresses the harm to American citizens of the United States. Other governments have addressed that harm and our government has not. And that is absolutely unacceptable. We don’t elect people to go to Congress and look the other way from American citizens. We elect them to represent our interests,” Cordova said.
MORE: