Hawley ‘Very Direct’ With McConnell on Failure to Back Bill for Compensating Radiation Victims

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) talks to reporters as he heads to the Senate floor for a vote in Washington, on Jan. 23, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said on Friday that he confronted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for not backing his proposal for compensating victims of radiation poisoning.

Last month, Mr. Hawley lashed at the congressional leadership for dropping his proposal to attach the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to the annual defense spending bill last year.

The proposal, which has the support of President Joe Biden, passed a Senate vote as an amendment with large bipartisan support last July, but some Republican lawmakers balked at its price tag.

Following a private meeting on Friday, Mr. Hawley told reporters outside Mr. McConnell’s Capitol office that he was “very direct” with the Senate GOP leader, who led efforts to remove the proposal from the National Defense Authorization Act, about the move being “a direct affront to my state,” the Hill reported.

“We had a discussion about RECA, and I just told him directly to his face what I told all of you, which is I didn’t appreciate that he took it out of the [National Defense Authorization Act]. That’s a direct affront to my state. There are thousands of people who are dying, and that he’s the problem and that I take that personally, just on behalf of my state, and it’s not acceptable to me,” Mr. Hawley said.

Despite the setback last year, the RECA will go to the Senate floor as a standalone bill next week after Mr. Hawley secured a vote with Senate Majority Leader Chuch Schumer (D-N.Y.).

RECA

The bill authorizes RECA, originally enacted in 1990 and expiring in June, which provides compensation for victims of “government-caused” radioactive waste in the St. Louis and St. Charles regions of Missouri. The legislation will expand the coverage to victims of exposure in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alaska.

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The act has provided federal compensation for the “unwitting participants” of the government’s atomic tests during the Manhattan Project era whose health “was put at risk to serve the national security interests of the United States,” the law states.

The funding provides support for victims to pay for disease and cancer treatments caused by the federal government’s nuclear waste, according to a press release by Mr. Hawley’s office.

Mr. Hawley wrote to his Republican colleagues on Feb. 26, urging them to reauthorize the legislation before it expires in the spring.

“It is our duty to reauthorize and update RECA this spring. I emphasize that this is not a welfare program. It is a matter of basic justice for those the government poisoned. We’ve developed the most advanced nuclear weapons on earth, but we cannot forget the working people of this country who were sacrificed for it. If we can send hundreds of billions of dollars in security assistance to foreign nations, we can spend a fraction of that on our own constituents who deserve help,” Mr. Hawley wrote.

‘Unlimited Money for Ukraine’ But Not Missourians

About a week earlier, Mr. Hawley took to the Senate floor to lambast the congressional leadership for advocating sending endless amounts of taxpayer money to Ukraine but not to the people in Missouri, who he said had sacrificed their health for the country.

“We have enough money to make hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer funds available to the private sector in Ukraine [...] We’ve got money without end [...] I have listened to colleague after colleague of mine, come to this floor, and stand where I am now, and say, ‘it’s so important that we spend this money on these overseas wars. We must spend the money,’” said Mr. Hawley.

“These same people turn to Missourians and say ‘you’re not worth a dime.’ They say, ‘you can’t have a penny.’ They turn to the residents of Kentucky, of Tennessee, and Alaska, and New Mexico, and Arizona, and Utah, and Texas, and they say, ‘we don’t care that you were poisoned, we don’t have a dime for you. We have unlimited money for Ukraine, we’re going to rebuild the borders of Ukraine, [...] but we don’t have anything for you.’”

‘I Was Very Direct’ With McConnell About Costs

On Friday, Mr. Hawley said that he told Mr. McConnell that he wants his support for the proposal, the cost of which he reduced by $100 billion from the original amendment.

According to Mr. Hawley, Mr. McConnell raised the cost of the proposal during their meeting, signaling that his stance has not changed.

“He brought up the cost, and I said I didn’t hear a lot of grousing about the cost when we were voting on Ukraine funding or anything else for that matter. He called it an entitlement. I said it’s not an entitlement; it’s a compensation program for people the government has poisoned,” Mr. Hawley said.

“I was very direct,” he added.

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks to his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 28, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

However, Mr. McConnell did not block Mr. Schumer from scheduling the bill for a vote next week. Mr. Hawley reportedly secured the vote after briefly holding up passage of the stopgap government funding bill last week, which Congress needed to pass by Friday in order to avert a partial government shutdown.

Mr. Hawley said he felt “good about” the vote, which needs 60 to pass.

Last July, the measure originally passed the Senate as an amendment to the defense spending bill with 61 bipartisan votes to 37.

The bill would also need to pass the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has previously indicated a lack of support.

“I hope they’ll take it up. If they don’t, I’ll keep attaching it to stuff,” Mr. Hawley said.

The Epoch Times contacted Mr. McConnell’s office for comment.