WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined the New Mexico Congressional Delegation and Tina Cordova, Co-Founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, to mark the one-year anniversary since the Radiation Exposure Compensation (RECA) Reauthorization Act, legislation to compensate Americans exposed to radiation by government nuclear programs, expired after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives failed to reauthorize RECA in June 2024.
Heinrich has reintroduced legislation to extend and expand RECA since his first Senate term, starting in 2013.
"In the year since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired, thousands of Americans lost compensation for health conditions caused by radiation exposure on behalf of our national security. And thousands of additional victims, victims who were never adequately compensated under the original bill, lost their chance to finally be included,” said Heinrich. "Our federal government has a moral responsibility to support Americans that helped defend our country– and it has a moral responsibility to include all people who were exposed. That begins with reauthorizing RECA and amending it to include those who have been left out for far too long. To the families impacted: keep telling your stories. Keep raising your voices. Together, that’s how we’ll reintroduce RECA, and it’s how we will make it the law of the land."
In January, Heinrich joined U.S. Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), along with U.S. Senators Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) to reintroduce their Radiation Exposure Compensation (RECA) Reauthorization Act to compensate Americans exposed to radiation by government nuclear programs.
Despite the Senate passing this bill last Congress, the House of Representatives failed to pass RECA reauthorization before its expiration deadline in June 2024.
Last fall, Heinrich joined Luján and U.S. Representatives Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), and Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), and advocates and survivors who traveled all the way across the country from New Mexico for a press conference calling on Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote on a Senate-passed bill that would strengthen RECA.
In March 2024, Heinrich delivered remarks on the Senate floor urging his colleagues to reauthorize and expand RECA. Later that day, Heinrich secured Senate passage of bipartisan legislation to reauthorize and expand RECA to compensate individuals exposed to radiation while working in uranium mines or living downwind from atomic weapons tests.
Heinrich’s remarks from today, as prepared for delivery, are below:
It’s been one full year since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired.
And not only have thousands of Americans lost compensation for health conditions caused by radiation exposure on behalf of our national security.
But thousands of additional victims, victims who were never adequately compensated under the original bill, also lost their chance to finally be included.
These victims include Tularosa Downwinders who were exposed to the Trinity Test in New Mexico;
All of the uranium workers who were exposed to radiation in service to our nation’s defense, not just the miners;
And all Americans who were directly impacted by our nation’s nuclear testing program, across the country and around the world.
Those Americans include people like my father. When he served in the Navy, my dad witnessed two above-ground nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.
It was only later in life that we began to understand how much his health challenges were tied to those tests.
Our federal government has a moral responsibility to support Americans that helped defend our country– and it has a moral responsibility to include all people who were exposed.
That begins with reauthorizing RECA and amending it to include those who have been left out for far too long.
To the families impacted: keep telling your stories. Keep raising your voices.
Together, that’s how we’ll reintroduce RECA, and it’s how we will make it the law of the land.
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