WASHINGTON - Utah legislators say downwinders were winners in the $388 billion spending bill passed by Congress on Saturday before lawmakers went home.
    The Bush administration had advocated funding for a nuclear bunker-buster bomb known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, as well as new advanced-concepts weapons designs.
    The House stripped the funds from its version of the bill earlier this year and key senators, like Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., insisted on it being added. The deadlock jeopardized funding for a series of energy and water projects until the Senate backed down and agreed to the funding plan without the weapons research.
    Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson, who resisted funding for the nuclear programs, called it "a great victory for those downwind of the Nevada Test Site."
    "Utahns have paid dearly for government deception about the safety of nuclear weapons testing," he said. "I am determined to resist that at every turn because this fight is not over. This issue will be revisited, but today is a satisfying victory."
    Downwinders, those sickened by exposure to radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear tests in Nevada, won another victory as Congress approved $27.8 million to cover a projected shortfall for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program. The program makes a lump payment as an effort to compensate the victims for their cancers and other illnesses.
    In past years the program has run out of money, and another shortfall was projected.
    "These funds mean Utah downwinders won't receive another IOU from the government this year," said Republican Sen. Bob Bennett. "This is an obligation the government must meet."
    As the only Utah member on an appropriations committee - which writes the spending bills - Bennett also was able to secure $5 million for the site preparation for the new Utah Museum of Natural History, bringing to $8 million the federal funds Bennett has secured for the project.
    He also secured $800,000 for health care services for needy Utahns through the Association of Utah Community Health, $400,000 for Utah's rural school districts to meet the obligations under the No Child Left Behind Act, $1 million for construction on the theater at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and $750,000 to combat methamphetamine in Box Elder, Rich, Wasatch, Tooele and Juab counties.
    "Meth use in Utah remains a tremendous threat to our communities and our citizens," said Bennett. "Continued support for law enforcement efforts is essential to combat this dangerous and widespread problem."
    Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group, included some of the Utah funding among examples of almost $16 billion in wasteful pork in the bill.
    "Here they go again," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of the group. "The facts speak for themselves. This bill is the fattest legislative hog that we have ever seen and despite record deficits, lawmakers are much more concerned with feathering the nests of their favorite parochial interests. If this bill is an indicator of what's to come, we will be swimming up a river of red ink for quite some time."