Congressional leaders vow federal support for downwinders

New Mexico’s three members of Congress joined survivors of radiation exposure Tuesday and vowed to revive and expand a federal program to compensate downwinders and uranium miners in the state.

“The truth is, is that New Mexicans have endured generations of suffering due to radiation exposure,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., said Tuesday at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

“The refusal to support the reauthorization and expansion of this critical act is not a failure of government but a deliberate disregard for the suffering of New Mexicans,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez was joined by U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and U.S. Reps. Melanie Stansbury and Teresa Leger Fernández, both New Mexico Democrats.

Congress in June allowed a federal program to help former uranium miners and people living downwind of nuclear testing with medical costs to sunset.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) extension and expansion passed the Senate in March and would extend the existing federal program that gives money to people with certain types of cancer who worked in uranium mines or were downwind of U.S. nuclear tests.

The existing program does not give benefits to descendants of downwinders, but the proposed expansion would. The House has not taken up the bill, allowing the program to sunset.

People in the audience Tuesday included former uranium workers and people who identify as downwinders, who have lived in the vicinity of above-ground atomic bomb tests, including the 1945 Trinity test near Alamogordo.

“I want to recognize your sacrifice and suffering,” Tina Cordova, co-founder the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, told people in the audience.

“And I want to apologize to you that after doing this work for so many years, we’re still in the same place,” she said.

Cordova said downwinders have made progress by getting a vote of 69 to 30 in the Senate in favor of the expansion.

Speakers were critical of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who they say refuses to allow the expansion to come to a vote on the floor of the House.

“Speaker Johnson knows that we have the votes to get it passed on the floor,” Leger Fernández said. “Speaker Johnson refuses to bring it on the floor. Why? He has no good reason.”