What Happened?

What happened to all those pending bills that were supposed to make the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program better?  Sadly, all of those proposed (described in my April 11, 2010 blog post) changes have "died in committee."

What exactly does this mean? Well, when a bill is introduced in Congress, it is assigned to a committee--a group that reviews bills dealing with a certain topic, for instance, education, finance, or homeland security.  Many bills never make it out of the committee to which they are assigned. In some cases, a committee simply fails to act on a given bill. When this occurs, the bill is said to have "died in committee," and it never becomes a law.

The six bills that were introduced in the House and in the Senate never made it out of committee, so Congress chose not to make any changes to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 2010.  So where do we go from here? In order to get Congress to once again consider making much-needed improvements to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, we need a Congressperson (or Congresspersons) to reintroduce the bills. If want change, as I know so many of you do, you must take an active role in this process by writing to or calling your Representative or Senators.

You can find your Representative's contact information by following the instructions at https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml.

Your Senators' contact information can be found at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=last_name&Sort=ASC.

Finally, if you'd like some advice on writing an effective letter to a Congressperson, here is a helpful link:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/letterscongress.htm.

Have a great week!