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While the Trump administration is aggressively trying to cut government spending, some of President Trump's most ardent supporters in Congress want to revive federal payments to people sickened by atomic weapons testing decades ago. From member station KNAU, Ryan Heinsius reports from Arizona.
RYAN HEINSIUS, BYLINE: On a windswept desert hillside overlooking Kingman, Arizona, Cullin Pattillo looks northwest. It's only about 120 miles as the crow flies to the Nevada test site near Las Vegas.
CULLIN PATTILLO: This is essentially what you'd have been looking at in the 1940s or 1950s.
HEINSIUS: About a hundred above-ground nuclear detonations happened at the test site in the 1950s and '60s. Locals could see them from here or catch glimpses of the atomic glow in the predawn hours.
PATTILLO: On several occasions, my father and his peers all had stories of watching a bomb blast.
HEINSIUS: Pattillo's family moved to the area in the late 19th century. But in the decades after the tests, his father and his aunt died of cancer. Jean Bishop's family moved here when she was a child. She and all six of her siblings have had cancer, too.
JEAN BISHOP: We believe it's because of the radiation that floated over the mountains into this area from the nuclear test site in Nevada.
HEINSIUS: In 1990, Congress authorized compensation payments for those sickened by the atomic bomb testing and manufacturing, including some so-called downwinders who suffered diseases, including lung, thyroid and pancreatic cancer. But despite its proximity to the test site, this area of western Arizona was never covered under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. It left out population centers, including Las Vegas and some tribal lands.
BISHOP: For them to ignore Mohave County as not being touched by this radiation exposure is bizarre, and that's what we're trying to correct.
HEINSIUS: Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would have renewed and expanded compensation for downwinders. But House leadership never took up the bill, allowing it to expire in June. Now Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley is trying to revive it.
JOSH HAWLEY: It's a moral argument. It's about doing right by the people who love this country and, in many cases, gave their lives for this country, gave their health for this country.
HEINSIUS: Hawley's bill would include St. Louis, the site of a major Cold War-era uranium processing plant. Generations there have also suffered from rare cancers and other diseases.
HAWLEY: It's got big bipartisan support in the Senate. The House needs to act, and we need to get this done. Really, hundreds of thousands of Americans are depending on it.
HEINSIUS: The cost of the bill, however, could stretch into the tens of billions of dollars. Last week, one of Arizona's most conservative congressmen, Paul Gosar, introduced a less expensive version that would expand benefits only to Mohave County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada. Hawley and Gosar's bills have some advocates for radiation compensation optimistic. George Daranyi, a Tucson-based attorney who's filed thousands of claims on behalf of downwinders, is watching House Speaker Mike Johnson closely.
GEORGE DARANYI: I think it's going to come down to whether or not Speaker Johnson has the appetite for introducing a bill on the floor that will add to federal spending.
HEINSIUS: Speaker Johnson did not respond to requests for comment. Daranyi says radiation exposure is an issue that ultimately cuts across ideologies and has impacted nearly every U.S. state.
DARANYI: It is a continuing, unfolding national tragedy. We bombed ourselves. We did this to our own people. And the consequences continue to play out every day.
HEINSIUS: At a moment of aggressive cost cutting, a new Radiation Exposure Compensation Act's fate will hinge on support from the very congressional leaders who let the program lapse.
For NPR News, I'm Ryan Heinsius in Flagstaff.
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