Rep. Colleen Hanabusa called it “insulting” that the federal government continues to financially burden Hawaii with fulfilling national obligations required under the Compact of Free Association (COFA). 

“It’s easy to just put it on all of us, and our residents have got to make up the difference for you,” Hanabusa told Tom Bussanich, budget director for the Office of Insular Affairs in a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. 

COFA enables residents from the Marshall Islands to live in the United States as a way to compensate the region for U.S. nuclear weapons testing that took place there in the 1940s and 1950s. 

The agreement is costly for Hawaii because the state has struggled to meet the resultant demand for health care services. Hawaii officials have long said that the amount of money that the federal government provides does not adequately offset the cost (Hanabusa introduced legislation in November 2011 aimed at correcting the imbalance). 

“Tell me why is it that the state has to bear the burden of a treaty that the United States entered into?” Hanabusa said. “We do not turn them away. We provide services on behalf of this nation.”

Bussanich did not appear to quell the congresswoman’s concerns about funding, and said that the federal government’s “basic approach is to try to continue to work locally” since the Obama administration decided that the federal government “can contribute no more to this purpose at this time.”

Watch the exchange between Hanabusa and Bussanich: