NM advocates, lawmakers pressure House speaker on compensation for radiation exposure

Carol Etcitty-Roger’s father worked in a uranium mine in Cove, Arizona, she told an audience of reporters, advocates and elected leaders at a news conference in Washington Tuesday.

As the oldest of five children, she helped her mother wash his work clothes, exposing her to uranium dust. Her father died of lung cancer. When Etcitty-Roger was diagnosed with cancer, her doctor asked if she had worked with uranium and told her he believed uranium exposure caused her cancer.

She’s since gone through chemo, radiation and surgery.

“It hurts. I tell my children, I don’t know how much time I have,” Etcitty-Roger said.

Other members of her family have also developed cancer, including her grandson and her sister. Her doctors have recommended that her entire family get screened for cancer.

Etcitty-Roger is one of at least 30 advocates who journeyed to D.C. this week to push for passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act reauthorization. Many are tribal members from Zuni, Laguna, Acoma and the Navajo Nation who traveled more than 30 hours by bus from Albuquerque to the nation’s capital.

The legislation would extend and expand a program that compensates people exposed to nuclear radiation who have developed specific medical conditions, including certain types of cancer. The program was originally created in the 1990s and has been extended regularly since — until Congress allowed it to sunset in June.

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich have led an effort in the Senate to expand the program to include people who worked in uranium mines after 1971 — the cutoff in the existing program — and to include more groups who were downwind of above-ground nuclear bomb tests or exposed to poorly contained nuclear waste.

The Senate has passed the RECA extension and expansion twice — first in July 2023 and again in March when 69 senators, including Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, voted in favor of the bill. But the legislation has stalled in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has declined to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Along with advocates, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Crystalyne Curley and the entire New Mexico congressional delegation are part of a campaign to pressure Johnson to bring the bill for a vote in the House.

“Our miners, back post-’71 all the way to the 1990s, they went into those mines not knowing what they were going to go into, but they knew that it was for national security,” Nygren said. “They knew that it was going to keep this country safe. They went into those mines not knowing what was going to happen to their bodies. But one of the things that I think has come due is to make sure that this country repays all of our post-1971 miners and their families, just the way they sacrificed themselves to protect this country.”

There is enough support in the House to pass the bill, said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M.

“But one person decides what gets heard on the floor of the House, and that is Speaker Johnson,” she said.

The Congressional Budget Office originally estimated the extension and expansion could cost $150 billion, but more recently estimated that it could cost $50 to $60 billion over 10 years. The RECA program has only paid out approximately $2.6 billion since it began in the 1990s, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice. Hawley said that there are ways to reduce the cost estimate, like a spending cap.

“The cost has already been paid,” Hawley said. “It’s been paid by the people in this room. You want to talk about the cost of chemotherapy, the cost of cancer, the cost of lost loved ones, the cost of burials, the cost of funerals — it has been paid by the people in this room. So, the United States government owes a debt to the people in this room.”

Activists plan to deliver their medical bills to Johnson on Wednesday.