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Both the US Senate and US House this week passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which heads to President Joe Biden following House approval yesterday. The president is expected to sign the bill, which includes 5.2% raises for military personnel and millions for New Mexico’s national nuclear laboratories, but excludes an amendment that would have expanded the Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act to include New Mexico’s nuclear victims.
The US Senate last summer supported the RECA amendment for the first time, US Sen. Ben Ray Luján, one of its sponsors, noted in a statement. “However, at the eleventh hour, Republican Leadership blocked its inclusion in the final bill,” he said. “This is an injustice to thousands upon thousands of individuals in New Mexico and across America who have sacrificed for our national security.”
Luján, who voted for the final bill along with the rest of the state’s congressional delegation, said he supports the military pay raises and money for the state’s laboratories, but will “never stop fighting for justice” for the state’s Trinity test downwinders and uranium miners who were excluded from the original RECA Act.
US Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-NM, expressed similar sentiments, calling the removal of the RECA amendment “disgraceful…the Senate passed the Amendments with broad bipartisan support and House Democratic leadership was likewise in support of provisioning justice and compensation to New Mexicans who toiled in the uranium industry and downwinders who lived near the Trinity Test site and deserve compensation for the cancers, other illness, and loss of life inflicted upon them for our national security. The Republican leadership’s rejection of the RECA Amendments Act behind closed doors is morally bankrupt.”
Among other appropriations to the state’s labs, the final defense bill includes $1.76 billion for programs and research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
