WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration proposed a massive new program Wednesday to compensate nuclear bomb plant employees who developed cancer. But that might be bad news for some Utahns.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said it might compete for funding with an existing program that he pushed into law to compensate downwind cancer victims of open-air atomic tests and uranium miners -- many of whom are Utahns.The trouble is, the new Clinton administration program -- which would give $100,000 to nuclear bomb plant employees who developed cancer -- is estimated to cost $400 million over its first five years.
Meanwhile, the federal government has not fully funded the program for downwinders and uranium miners. It is expected to fall $7.25 million short of money needed for valid claims filed this year.
And Clinton proposed only $13.7 million for the program next year, which is $2.3 million less than projected needs for valid claims that year. That means the existing program could be in a $10 million hole soon for valid claims.
Hatch said that if on top of that, downwinders must now compete with another massive compensation program for available funds, annual appropriations battles will be even more difficult.
The new program also comes as Hatch has been trying to expand the existing downwinder program, which Congress passed in 1990, to add new types of eligible cancers and to make qualifying for compensation easier.
He pushed that after a Deseret News series showed more than half the people who apply are now denied compensation because they have the wrong cancer, lived a few miles the wrong direction or cannot prove easily they meet all the qualifications.
"I think the amendments will pass this year," Hatch said, noting he has already pushed them through the Senate, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde has promised to try to push them through the House.
In fact, Clinton's proposal could help them pass, he said. "It creates an atmosphere of concern on this topic," he said.
Ironically, Hatch said the new program likely wouldn't be possible without the years of work by him and downwinders for their own program.
"They are building on the 10 years of work, hearings and gathering of scientific data that we gathered about the effects of radiation," Hatch said.
Hatch added that he does not oppose compensating nuclear bomb plant employees if they can make the same case that downwinders and uranium workers did that they were endangered. He is merely concerned how it will affect existing programs.
Downwinders who qualify for compensation are now paid $50,000. Uranium miners are paid $100,000, because stronger, more direct evidence exists that their work caused cancer, and that the government knew that it likely would but did not warn them.
Hatch said he does not oppose paying nuclear bomb plant employees $100,000 because their situation seems similar to that of uranium miners.
Vice President Al Gore, in remarks prepared for the formal Wednesday afternoon announcement of the new program proposal, said the administration is reversing a decades-old practice of the government fighting bomb factory workers to now help them.
"Today this administration begins the process of compensating workers for their suffering and becoming an advocate for all contract workers, no matter where they worked," Gore said.