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Tina Cordova has spent about two decades fighting to bring government compensation to the generations of people in the Tularosa Basin who have suffered the health consequences of radiation exposure following the Trinity Bomb test 80 years ago.
Last year, Cordova came closer than ever before to achieving this goal. Expanding and extending the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act passed the U.S. Senate with a veto-proof majority and then-President Joe Biden committed to signing the bill should it make it to his desk.
Then it stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives when Speaker Mike Johnson chose not to bring it to the floor for a vote.
“We came so close, and one man, Speaker Johnson, blocked this,” she said.
Cordova said she feels “extreme anger” about the way the government is set up so that a single person can “completely block a nonpartisan issue from advancing in Congress.”
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired last year on June 10.
Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of RECA expiring, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) issued a statement on the urgent need to reauthorize and strengthen RECA. The lawmakers underscored the critical importance of delivering long-overdue justice to Americans harmed by nuclear testing
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This story originally is republished from NM Political Report. Keep reading here (free).