GOP Debates Benefits for Victims of Radiation

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Republican divisions over benefits for victims of nuclear weapons testing might cause the program to expire after this week, The Hill reported.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed in 1990 and provides healthcare and other benefits to Americans who suffered from radiation poisoning and other issues while working to mine uranium and build and test nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project and during the Cold War.

The legislation is set to expire unless legislators can agree on a bill, but congressional Republicans are divided over whether to extend the program or to expand it to include other victims of nuclear testing, such as states like Missouri and others where locals were downwind from nuclear testing in the 1940s.

House leaders scheduled a vote on a new bill but retracted that decision after backlash from supporters of an expanded bill. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and other Missouri House delegates have suggested that they will not support a bill that does not expand RECA coverage to Missourians.

“I don’t think [Speaker Mike Johnson] had the votes,” Hawley told reporters. “He wanted to do it on suspension, that needs two-thirds … he needed every Republican vote plus what a third of the Democrats.”

“You saw some of my colleagues express their concern about what was left out and there’s not a consensus on where to go from here,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters on Tuesday. “There are a lot of issues like that that we’re still working through.”