Jeff Wiggins, President of West KY AFL-CIO

Sen. Mitch McConnell we’re on to your con job.

You still want us to believe that you are responsible for the cancer screenings and compensation program for workers at the U.S. Enrichment Corp.’s Paducah gaseous diffusion plant and other nuclear facilities.

But we know that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was the lead sponsor of the Energy Employees Occupational Compensation Program Act of 2000, which benefits nuclear workers who have suffered from cancer and other serious illnesses related to radiation exposure.

We know that the legislation passed the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support and that President Bill Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, both Democrats, backed the bill.

Sen. McConnell, you took office in 1985. But mum was the word from you about health hazards at the plant until The Washington Post published stories exposing the dangers in 1999. That led to more investigative reporting by the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Sen. McConnell, you might deny knowledge of the dangers before the Post broke the story. But in the 1970s, Joe Harding, who worked at the plant for many years, started speaking out about the health hazards. The media reported his whistle-blowing.

In 1980, Harding died of cancer connected to radiation exposure. After the Post stories, Richardson came to Paducah, met Harding’s widow, Clara, and praised him as a “cold war hero.” (The plant enriched uranium for atomic weapons as well as for nuclear power plants.)

Sen. McConnell, you weren’t the only politician to demand an investigation after the Post story broke. Richardson ordered the energy department to look into problems at the plant. Gov. Paul Patton, a Democrat, named a state task force to look into charges of serious environmental damage caused by the plant, the Post reported.

Before 1999, you never called for an investigation of health risks at the plant. In 1988, you voted against an amendment that would have made Department of Energy

subcontractors who operate nuclear facilities like the Paducah plant “liable for accidents caused by intentional negligence or misconduct at plants,” according to The Huffington Post.

And since you have been in office, Sen. McConnell, what exactly have you done to bring additional nuclear-related pilot projects, or complete projects or processes, or a manufacturing re-industrialization program to the 3,500-acre plant site?

Sen. McConnell, by now, the Paducah site could be an “Energy Star” facility within the DOE had you used your position as senate minority leader to bring us that that classification. With it would have come jobs for the highly-skilled, well-trained, and safety conscious workforce that we have in our region, which has an outstanding college corridor with the University of Kentucky engineering program, the new Murray State University Paducah campus and the West Kentucky Community Technical and College. The prestigious Aspen Institute named WKCTC among the top five community colleges in our nation. All of these schools can provide the training for a future nuclear, or technology-driven, industrial workforce.

Your fellow Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham, has stood up and demanded additional funding for additional projects for the Savannah River, S.C., DOE nuclear reservation and its workers.

Now, Sen. McConnell, the Paducah plant is shutting down and many of the workers are getting laid off. Good jobs are scarce in our region. Yet you are against long-term unemployment insurance. You also want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, under which the jobless workers could get health insurance.

Sen. McConnell, Abraham Lincoln, your party’s greatest president and one of our country’s greatest presidents, famously observed, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Sen. McConnell, you aren't fooling anyone.