Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is threatening President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda by stuffing the stopgap spending bill with Democrat spending and carveouts to “Big Pharma,” while doing nothing to help Americans poisoned by government nuclear radiation.

“It’s baffling to me that Mike Johnson would threaten President Trump’s agenda by agreeing to all this Democrat spending and then dumping it right back in President Trump’s lap in March,” the Missouri senator said in a written statement to Breitbart News.

“This bill is stuffed with giveaways to Big Pharm and pay increases for congressmen, but nothing for the health of Americans poisoned by their own government’s nuclear radiation. It’s America-Last. It’s a slap in the face to my state and every victim of the government’s nuclear-waste poisoning. Mike Johnson needs to explain himself,” he added.

Hawley personally blamed Johnson for killing the “bipartisan, bicameral” deal to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) program inside the stop-gap spending bill. The Missouri senator cosponsored a RECA expansion bill that passed through Congress’s upper chamber by a two-to-one margin this spring.

RECA has long served to compensate Americans diagnosed with certain cancers if they were exposed to nuclear radiation near above-ground nuclear testing sites.

This includes Missouri, KSDK reported:

The exposure of Missourians to radioactive waste came from uranium processing in St. Louis for the World War II Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb.

While the presence of radioactive contamination in suburban St. Louis was known for years, an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed in 2023 that the federal government and companies handling the waste were aware of the threat to the public long before informing residents.

 Instead of reauthorizing RECA, the stop-gap spending bill:
  • Subsidizes the State Department’s conservative censorship slush fund
  • Gives lawmakers a raise while Americans struggle with inflation
  • Allows lawmakers to opt out of Obamacare
  • Blocks or stymies investigations into the House

The Show-Me State senator is not the only member to be enraged by the exclusion of RECA from the spending bill.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said he worked with the entire Utah delegation, Republicans and Democrats, to strike a compromise to help Americans “hurt by government nuclear testing, mining, and waste storage.”

Lee wrote on Tuesday:

Just today, Speaker Johnson said that the Continuing Resolution needed to contain disaster relief for families still suffering from the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton. An understandable concern! But now we’re told that a bill full of handouts from The Uniparty to The Swamp doesn’t have room to compensate people suffering from radiation exposure and other ailments *caused by our own government*. Outrageous. 

Lee added, “Why are victims of our own government’s nuclear testing being forced take a backseat to The Uniparty and The Swamp?”

“The speaker’s been an embarrassment from beginning to end, and the CR is the latest example of this. The CR is a total disaster. Why he continues to be elected as speaker is beyond me,” Hawley said on Wednesday.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.