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Floor Speech
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Mr. LUJAN. Mr. President, let me begin by quoting Senator Orrin Hatch, the primary author of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. In his final years, Senator Hatch said:
Updating this legislation is a moral imperative. RECA, as it is currently written, extends benefits only to uranium miners, millers, and transporters who worked until 1972. But an updated bill would extend benefits to those who worked after 1972, many of whom have developed cancer as a result of radiation exposure.
Let me repeat that. Senator Orrin Hatch said it was a moral imperative to provide justice to what are called Post-71 miners. And what does this bill offer to these Americans who have suffered for our country? Nothing. What does this bill offer to downwinders in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Montana? Again, nothing. Instead, this exercise is an attempt to undermine the strong bipartisan coalition that passed historic RECA legislation.
I hope no one misreads what is happening today. There is a bipartisan coalition, there is a bipartisan group of advocates across the country that is growing and growing. There are more cosponsors in the House. The strongest vote that has ever taken place in the U.S. Senate has already passed this bill.
Let me be clear. Our bipartisan coalition will work with anyone who wants to meaningfully help the victims of all radiation and uranium exposure illnesses--including those that voted no when the Senate passed the RECA to the House just a few months ago. But we should help all of them, every one of these families that qualifies.
By the way, just because a community is included as a downwind county, it doesn't mean all the people living there benefit from the program. They still have to fight and prove that they lived in this community for a number of years, that their critical illnesses and cancers are those that science shows were due to this exposure. They have to fight. It is not just given to them. There is a whole process associated with the science, and study after study continues to show how these families deserve this help.
As a matter of fact, in committee this week, we were having a hearing to help coal miners in America. And some of the experts that were in that room, I asked them about exposure with uranium and the kind of cancers that we should expect, and I asked them specifically about uranium mine workers. And it wasn't surprising when that witness told us that the same uranium mine workers who worked 1971 and before--their cancers--it turns out that the uranium mine workers that worked in 1972 had the same cancer as well.
Senator Orin Hatch, through his wisdom and his words and in my conversations with this great leader, said: We have to fix these mistakes.
I will close with this. A few years ago, a Navajo elder--and I have shared this with our colleagues before--when she spoke before the House of Representatives, she asked an important question to a panel of Members that were not supportive of expanding RECA, and it was simple: Are you waiting for all of us to die so that the problem goes away?
With a simple vote in the House, taking up this Senate legislation that the Senate passed with 69 votes, authored by Senator Hawley, we can answer her question with a resounding: No, we are going to get help to families.
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