The ranking GOP member of the Senate Armed Services Committee doesn’t expect a measure compensating people who became sick because of radioactive waste exposure to be considered this year.
During a visit Wednesday to the future site of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, told reporters that radiation compensation “is an issue that will be resolved in the next Congress” because it’s “not something that the House of Representatives is going to take up this year.”
Earlier this year, a program called the Radioactive Exposure Compensation Act expired. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and other members of the Missouri delegation were trying to add parts of the St. Louis area into the program. Hawley’s legislation passed the Senate earlier this year, but it’s stalled in the House.
Some lawmakers had pushed back against Hawley’s RECA bill because they said it was too expensive. Hawley has said it is the obligation of the federal government to compensate people because of radioactive waste exposure stemming from the Manhattan Project.
Wicker, who has not supported Hawley’s efforts to expand RECA, said he would like to see a version of the bill that will ultimately cost less money.
“I think there's a way to make it more targeted and to give relief to people who need it without the huge budget impact, and that's what I'm striving for,” Wicker said.
Hawley last year unsuccessfully sought to add RECA into the National Defense Authorization Act, a critical national security bill. Wicker, whose committee plays a major role in shaping the act, said he would prefer that measure stay out of the next version of the NDAA.
“There's a tendency to use the one bill that's moving as a catch-all vehicle for a number of things,” Wicker said. “We need to be taking up more legislation in regular order in the United States Senate.”
In a statement, Hawley blasted Wicker’s comments.
“What an ill-informed and frankly insulting attitude toward the victims of nuclear radiation in Missouri,” Hawley said. “This is the kind of intransigence we have had to fight at every step. But we prevailed in the Senate. Now the House must schedule a vote as soon as they return.”
Hawley has been in negotiations with House Speaker Mike Johnson about moving a version of RECA through the legislative process. According to a source close to those negotiations, Wicker has not been part of those discussions.
Missouri U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, who supports Hawley’s efforts to add St. Louis area ZIP codes into RECA, said he hoped Wicker’s prediction is wrong. But he added that the GOP-controlled House hasn’t shown willingness to move any RECA legislation forward.
“Even some of the folks that voted against it, I think there's hope that we can convince them,” Schmitt said. “But to the broader point, there needs to be more vehicles where you can actually build these interesting coalitions. We don't have that right now in the United States Senate.”
