Hawley blasts exclusion of RECA expansion from government funding bill

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) blasted the exclusion of an agreement to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) from a 1,500-page bill to fund the federal government, blaming Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for its exclusion.

Johnson “personally killed a bipartisan, bicameral expansion + spending cap RECA deal. It was him alone,” Hawley, who co-sponsored a RECA expansion bill that passed the Senate by a 2-to-1 margin this spring, posted on social media Tuesday night.

However, a person familiar with the thinking of House Republican leadership told The Hill that Hawley mischaracterized the extent to which a deal had advanced and that other members of leadership besides Johnson had raised objections. The person said leadership also balked at changes to the RECA program the agreement would make, saying leaders’ reservations remained the same as they were when negotiations first began.

RECA, first passed in the 1990s, offers one-time payments to compensate Americans exposed to nuclear radiation by wartime atomic testing and refinement of radioactive materials, as well as their families. The measure, co-sponsored by Hawley and Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would reauthorize the law and expand its geographical coverage. The original law’s authorization expired over the summer.

A source familiar with the matter told The Hill that before Johnson rejected the proposal, Utah’s delegation had spearheaded a compromise deal that included a spending cap with a major geographic expansion to RECA eligibility, including Cold War-era uranium miners in the western U.S. Johnson’s office had previously said the primary hurdle to his support was concerns about costs and whether it could secure majority support after a minority of the Senate GOP caucus backed it.

Hawley developed the proposal with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who voted against the Senate-passed RECA bill and developed an alternate, scaled-back proposal with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). House GOP leadership briefly scheduled a vote on a House version of the Lee-Romney bill before pulling it. Hawley threatened to block any continuing resolution only covering parts of Utah last week.

The Hill reached out to Lee's office for comment.

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