Amid increasing Democratic criticism, Republican Congressional candidate Yvette Herrell said Wednesday that she is broadly supportive of extending and expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, including the $50 billion bill that sits unheard on GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s desk.
Herrell is seeking to reclaim her House seat from incumbent Democrat Gabe Vasquez in one of the nation’s most hotly contested elections. She told Source New Mexico on Wednesday that she believes RECA should be expanded.
“I will support any and all of the efforts,” Herrell said. “I think there’s a responsibility from the government, the federal government, to the downwinders and the uranium workers.”
She said the program should be expanded to downwinders in New Mexico and multiple states who haven’t been compensated, and uranium mine workers exposed after 1971.
Among those deserving, she said, are downwinders in Guam, who were exposed to nuclear weapons testing between the 1940s and 1960s.
A group of House Democrats, including Vasquez, gathered Tuesday evening in Albuquerque for a campaign rally, calling on Johnson to give the RECA bill a vote before the general election. Johnson in late May announced he would not bring to a vote a bill extending RECA, citing the price tag.
Several of the roughly 30 attendees at the rally wore oxygen masks, which they said they needed due to lung damage sustained from exposure to uranium mines or mushroom clouds decades ago. Advocates say thousands in New Mexico were sickened, along with their descendants for generations.
“Think about the trauma that we’ve suffered,” said Paul Pino, who grew up in Carrizozo about 40 miles from the Trinity Site and said he lost a mother and brother to cancer. “And think about how people like Mike Johnson just are unmovable, just like they have no heart.”
Vasquez and other House Democrats also criticized Herrell. He alleged she didn’t support the RECA expansion for New Mexico downwinders, which Herrell denies. Democrats also said she was unwilling to hold Johnson’s feet to the fire about the issue.
“What action do you think Yvette Herrell will take when she’s in Congress, supported and endorsed by the very person who is blocking this legislation?” Vasquez told the crowd at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. “The refusal to support the reauthorization and expansion of this critical act is not a failure of government, but a deliberate disregard for the suffering of New Mexicans for generations.”
Johnson will campaign for Herrell in New Mexico next week, including a visit to Las Cruces on Wednesday, Herrell said.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired about two months ago, despite bipartisan calls to extend and expand the program for different categories of workers and residents sickened by radiation exposure. The bill that Johnson refuses to bring to the floor, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), passed the Senate 69-30. Twenty Republicans voted for the measure.
Time is running out for the expired RECA program to be reauthorized and expanded this year. Congress meets in Washington D.C. for only a few weeks in September before the general election, and Democrats said it was unlikely Johnson would change his position.
Vasquez, citing a recent Albuquerque Journal article, told reporters after the meeting that he believed Herrell was opposed to expanding the program for downwinders in the Tularosa Basin area, which falls into Congressional District 2.
Tina Cordova, a longtime advocate on behalf of downwinders impacted by the Trinity blast in 1946, also told Source New Mexico on Wednesday that Herrell has been quoted or paraphrased in news articles having different positions on RECA, including advocating for less than a full expansion or saying she wanted a separate program for downwinders.
Hoping to set the record straight, Herrell said she endorses an expansion. She said she believes she and her opponent want the same groups of people to be covered by RECA, even with the high price tag. She pointed to her record as a cosponsor to the RECA Amendment Act when she served in Congress before Vasquez took her seat.
Out of office, she said she’s met with uranium workers in Grants and brought the issue up with Johnson in private. Herrell stopped short of saying she disagreed with Johnson about his decision, saying it was “his discretion” to bring bills for a vote, but she’ll urge him to take action on the bill when they meet next week in Las Cruces.
“I’ll be meeting with him privately. Obviously, this is the top of my list for something that I’d like to see them take action on,” she said.
Cordova called on Herrell to go a step further and arrange a meeting between downwinders and Johnson during his visit.
“Everybody across this country who’s a downwinder and a uranium worker has been begging to meet with him,” she said.
While Herrell supports a full expansion, she said she understands why some of her former colleagues in the House are worried about costs, citing the mounting national debt and other spending.
“That kind of money gives a little bit of pause to some of the members,” she said.
Herrell said she was more optimistic than her Democratic opponents about chances for a RECA expansion this year. She pointed to a separate bill that she hoped would spur the House leaders into action, should it pass the House Judiciary Committee and head to the Speaker’s desk.
Sponsored by U.S. Rep. Harriet Hagemen (R-Wyoming), the bill provides compensation to uranium miners in 11 states, including New Mexico, and extends but does not expand RECA. It also uses unspent COVID-19 pandemic funds to pay for it, she said, which might make it more appealing to fiscal conservatives.
“Certainly having both bills at the speaker’s table would be a great catalyst and opportunity for the speaker to broker a deal with a compromise bill,” she said.
Source New Mexico reporter Danielle Prokop contributed to this report.
