Senate panel backs downwinder funds

WASHINGTON — The Senate Budget Committee has taken the first step to protect funds that are promised to downwind cancer victims of atomic testing.

The funds could run out next year if action is not taken.

At the prodding of the Bush administration and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the committee added $72 million for the trust funds for 2005 in a budget resolution it finished this week and sent to the full Senate for debate.

Without eventual approval of such extra funding, Hatch said trust funds would run out of money to pay expected claims by June 2005.

"This is the first step in the legislative process. The next steps are to get this through the full Senate and then get the added funding included in the Senate and House appropriations bills," Hatch said.

"I'm determined that the federal government give radiation exposure victims in Utah and across the West the compensation they deserve," he said.

Trust funds ran out of money once before in 1991, when the government essentially sent IOUs to qualifying downwinders until funding became available. Congress thought it fixed such problems by then ordering higher, automatic annual funding.

But the government is receiving more claims than expected and processing them more quickly than anticipated. With that, Hatch says, the U.S. General Accounting Office now projects a total shortfall of $78 million in funding through 2011. The Justice Department projects shortfalls nearer to $100 million.

Hatch says the Bush administration recognizes the problem and tried to fix it by requesting the additional $72 million in the recently proposed 2005 budget above the $65 million already ordered for that year through prior legislation. Hatch also has lobbied the Budget Committee hard for the extra money.

Hatch and the late Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, worked to pass the compensation program for downwinders in 1990. Hatch expanded it with amendments in 2000 to expand the categories of cancers that are eligible for payments.

The Justice Department said the program has paid $666 million to 10,141 claimants through the years. Also, it said another 2,592 claims now pending but not yet decided have a potential value of $180.8 million.

The program pays qualifying downwind cancer victims of atomic tests $50,000 each. It pays cancer victims who were uranium miners, uranium millers, ore transporters and those who worked at the Nevada Test Site $100,000 each, in part because the government knew those people would likely become ill but did not warn them.

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E-mail: leed@dgsys.com