ALERT! Major Water Restrictions In Effect!
Hawley stormed out of the meeting, telling reporters that McConnell had never objected to the United States sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and that the RECA reauthorization act had just been taken out of a larger defense spending bill.
“We had a discussion about RECA, and I just told him directly to his face what I told all of you, which is I didn’t appreciate that he took it out of the [National Defense Authorization Act],” Hawley said.
The senator went on to discuss what he had said to McConnell:
“That’s a direct affront to my state. There are thousands of people who are dying, and that he’s the problem, and that I take that personally, just on behalf of my state, and it’s not acceptable to me.”
Hawley challenges McConnell’s cost-related worries, citing the absence of objections during previous funding votes for the Ukraine and other issues.
“He called it an entitlement. I said it’s not an entitlement, it’s a compensation program for people the government has poisoned,” the Missouri Republican concluded. “I was very direct.”
McConnell is not going to block a vote this spring to renew RECA.
Remediation of the soil and water sources in eastern Missouri is an ongoing project, initiated decades after Mallinckrodt Chemical Works enriched uranium for the United States’ first atomic bomb program. Rare cancers and other illnesses have affected the surrounding community, the families of former employees, and themselves.
