Utah goes to a great deal of effort and expense to send six people to represent it in the United States Congress. Sometimes it is difficult to see why we bother.
Not one of the Utah congressional delegation — two senators and four members of the House of Representatives, all Republicans — has lifted a finger to win for Utahns an extension and expansion of a federal program designed to make some small recompense to people who became ill and died as a direct result of open-air nuclear weapons testing throughout the Cold War.
It’s called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and, since 1990, it has allocated some $2.6 billion to assist some 40,000 “Downwinders.” Those are the victims suffering from cancers and other maladies caused by the radioactive clouds that drifted across Nevada, Utah and other states, as well as workers who were exposed to radiation in weapons facilities and mines.
The law expired in June, despite several congressional efforts to extend the program and expand its benefits to residents of northern Utah and many other states where people were affected.
A bill managed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, passed the Senate with a bipartisan 69-30 vote in March. Neither of Utah’s senators, Mike Lee or Mitt Romney, supported it, gagging on the estimated $50 billion price tag and denying, against all scientific evidence, that the expanded program was justified.
Utah’s four members of the House — Blake Moore, Burgess Owens, Celeste Maloy and John Curtis — have also been missing in action in this effort. They said nothing when House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked the Senate bill from even getting a vote in the House.
The cost of the program is minuscule compared to the sums we drop into weapons programs every year. Begrudging assistance to real people crushed in the gears of America’s war machine is beneath us as Americans.
If Utah’s members of Congress want to be worth the cost of maintaining them, they should work long and hard to extend and expand RECA into the future. Utahns should tell them so.