WASHINGTON -- A White House budget official on Thursday said the Bush administration is not planning to reduce benefits for government workers who became ill from exposure to nuclear radiation and other toxins during the Cold War.

Austin Smythe, acting deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said an OMB document known as a "passback," which suggested benefit reductions, has been misunderstood.

"(A passback) is inappropriate to leak and it's now been inappropriate to characterize as administration policy, which it's not," Smythe told the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and border security.

"Our policy is to implement (the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act) ... and that sick workers get their full private benefits in the time remaining," Smythe said.

The passback suggested five options for containing costs in the compensation program, which Congress created in 2000.

But Smythe said passbacks are merely part of the give and take between OMB and administration agencies in preparing the federal budget each year.

"We have no budget policy proposals to reduce or otherwise modify these benefits," Smythe said.

Smythe noted the program has paid more than $2 billion to 23,000 claimants since payments began in 2001.

Smythe's comments followed a scathing opening statement from Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., the subcommittee chairman, who has launched a series of hearings on the compensation program since the passback was leaked late last year.

Hostettler charged senior members of the Department of Labor, which is in charge of the compensation program, have expressed concern about opening a "floodgate of costs" which could increase by $7 billion over the next 10 years.

The U.S. government is willing to spend billions of dollars "without a blink" to help victims of natural disasters, Hostettler said.

"In this case we, as a government, did the harm, knew we were doing the harm and intentionally deceived people working to protect this nation from harm," Hostettler said.

"How can any one of us, including the individuals within the administration tasked with carrying out the program, take the position that these claimants are unworthy of our assistance?" Hostettler asked. "Unlike assistance programs where millions of dollars are paid out on a budget ... the claimants under this program can't fake cancer."

Hostettler said he lost his mother and father to cancer. He acknowledged some workers may not have contracted cancer because of their jobs.

"But we also remember that the chance that their cancer may have been caused by their exposures is possible, in many cases, only because of the government's willingness to put them in harm's way by manipulating the record of their exposures or outright deceit about the safety of their workplace," Hostettler said.

"Pinching pennies never looked so inappropriate as it does when addressing the plight of these workers," he said. "Those who have made it their mission to use any method possible to justify denial of assistance to these workers should be ashamed of themselves."

The committee's ranking Democrat, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, also criticized the administration's handling of the compensation program and introduced legislation that would replace the presidential advisory board which is reviewing sick workers' claims.

Hostettler and Lee have complained two advisory board members were removed this year without cause, raising questions about the board's balance.

"We do not need cost containment programs," Lee said. "(Victims) need relief."

Lewis Wade, the designated federal official for the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, said about 70 percent of claimants are denied.

"Communicating this to workers who feel their government has lied to them before is a difficult challenge," Wade said.