Senators face off over bill to help retired coal miners
Health and pension funds for 100,000 across U. S. at risk
For nearly two decades, David Dilly worked as a strip miner for Simco- Peabody’s now- abandoned mine in Coshocton, where he helped remove layers of soil and rock to unearth Ohio’s rich coal beds.
Since being laid off in 2008, amid the global economic meltdown and a contraction in the coal industry, Dilly has received about $ 300 a month in pension benefits.
Now, Dilly’s retirement money is in jeopardy. The health and pension funds that Dilly and more than 100,000 other coal miners across the U. S. rely on are threatened with financial insolvency.
Ohio’s two U. S. senators — Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman — are among those pushing for a legislative fix that supporters say would protect the coal miners’ hardearned benefits, without costing taxpayers anything. The bill has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats and Republicans from Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia leading an aggressive push to pass the measure before the end of the year.
But the bill has at least one powerful foe in Congress: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., who portrays himself as a staunch defender of his home state’s coal industry.
“McConnell … has opposed this because he doesn’t like the United Mine Workers Union,” said Brown. “We could win this on a straight up or down vote.”
The United Mine Workers Union of America endorsed McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Alison Grimes, in the 2014 election, and the union’s political action committee spent more than $ 300,000 trying to defeat McConnell.
Robert Steurer, a spokesman for McConnell, did not directly answer questions about whether the senator was blocking the bill. Steurer also declined to spell out McConnell’s position on the proposal.
“Senator McConnell has been and remains committed to helping ensure the retirement security of our nation’s retirees, including coal miners,” Steur- er said in an emailed statement. “He appreciates the importance of this issue ... and continues to believe this issue deserves an open, transparent debate through regular order.”
At the center of the legislative standoff is a 12- page bill called the Miners Protection Act. The bill would transfer excess money from the Abandoned Mine Land fund — a coal mine cleanup program — to the 1974 United Mine Workers of America Pension Plan, which now pays benefits to about 120,000 retirees.
Although it’s a private, multi- employer pension fund, the UMWA plan has a special guarantee from the federal government — secured in 1946 when then- president Harry Truman’s administration helped negotiate a contract with mine workers who were threatening to strike.
“Coal miners made a commitment to provide the nation with much- needed energy even at the risk of their lives and health in often dangerous conditions,” UMWA International President Cecil Roberts told a Senate Finance Committee hearing in March. In exchange, he said, the government promised to ensure miners have health care and pension benefits.
About 6,500 Ohio retired coal miners receive these benefits, said Phil Smith, government affairs director of the mine workers union. In Kentucky, that number is approximately 10,000 retirees, he said, and “if we don’t get new money into this pension plan through this legislation within the next 12 to 18 months, that fund will be past the point of no return.”
Congress was on the cusp of passing the Miners’ Protection Act last December, when supporters pushed to have it included in a massive, must- pass spending bill. But according to a February story in The Washington Post, McConnell blocked that effort at the last minute.
“If we don’t get new money into this pension plan ... within the next 12 to 18 months, that fund will be past the point of no return.” Phil Smith, United Mine Workers