Idaho's nuclear downwinders have earned their right to cynicism.

The federal government has ignored them. Their elected officials — namely Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne — had the chance to press the downwinders' case while serving in the U.S. Senate, but didn't do nearly enough.

The downwinders believe their elevated cancer rates are linked to nuclear weapons tests conducted on the Nevada desert during the 1950s and 1960s. The Cold War has ended but the bureaucratic battle continues.

Senators are taking a third run at expanding a federal program that provides payments to downwind cancer victims. Previous efforts have failed.

One plus, potentially, is the bill's bipartisan Western backing. Idaho Republican Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch are teaming up with Montana Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester.

The quartet has common ground because the basic science has never changed. While the feds' Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has paid cancer victims in 21 counties in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, the law has never covered Idaho and Montana counties that received even higher concentrations of radioactive iodine fallout from the Nevada tests.

"This legislation is about stepping up and doing what’s right for folks in Montana and Idaho, just like we’ve been doing for the other states already covered by RECA," Baucus said recently.

It could help that the issue is a priority for Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chair and a key player in President Obama's health care reform effort. "I'm not necessarily a supporter of Barack Obama, but he's bringing up health care and health issues, and I think there are more people in Congress who already are thinking in that vein," Emmett downwinder advocate Tona Henderson told the Statesman's Erika Bolstad.

Not everyone is as optimistic. Sarah Wolfe, a downwinder living in Wendell, had this to say to Blair Koch, a correspondent with The Times-News in Twin Falls. "Wolves are more important than taking care of people effected by bomb testing done by the government, than the people. We are at the bottom of the chain."

Wolfe and her fellow downwinders deserve the right to be skeptical. They also deserve their share of money from Uncle Sam.

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