A bill that could protect pensions and health benefits for area retired coal miners passed out of the Senate Finance Committee, but its fate remains spotty thanks to a looming election and possible government shutdown.
Congress will recess Oct. 1 ahead of the November election, leaving the bill in the hands of a lame-duck Senate. Meanwhile, the United Mine Workers of America, the union representing the miners, has refused to discuss its plans to get the bill passed.
The Miners Protection Act passed out of committee Wednesday with a vote of 18-8.
However, UMWA spokesman Phil Smith repeatedly declined to provide details on how the union will drum up support for the bill in the full Senate. He would only say that the bill hinged on the whims of Kentucky Republican and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who blocked a proposal to pass the bill last year.
Would the union schedule a meeting with McConnell? Ask members to contact their legislators? Plan another rally before Congress recesses?
“I’m not going to tell you that,” he said to the Courier & Press. “Would you ask the Heritage Foundation what they're doing to try to kill the bill?”
When asked what they’re doing to try to kill the bill, Heritage Foundation senior analyst Rachel Greszler said the foundation “doesn’t have a specific plan.” However, she called the legislation a “terrible precedent” for Congress.
“This would set the precedent to do something the federal government has never done in history,” she said. “To use taxpayer money to fund a private pension plan.”
Greszler said the UMWA pension fund is one of 1,300 similar union funds across the country, many of which she said were insolvent by billions of dollars. She offered the slippery-slope argument: if the government bails out the miners’ fund, wouldn’t it have to bail out all the others as well?
She claimed the UMWA fund has an unfunded liability of $5.6 billion – a difference that would have be made up, she said, from taxpayer dollars.
She also disputed a key UMWA talking point: that the government promised union members "cradle to the grave" protection in 1946. She said that deal, struck between union leader John L. Lewis and President Harry S. Truman, has nothing to do with current legislation.
“Look: I know the United Mine Workers hate me and think I’m out to get mine workers. I agree (workers) have no role in this,” Greszler said. “It’s not their fault the benefits aren’t there. They took this job thinking it would provide them pensions and healthcare for life, and absolutely they have the right to do that. But the government has nothing to do with that.”
Supporters of the bill, including a slew of legislators who spoke at a massive UMWA rally on the National Mall on Sept. 8, have claimed money is already available to shore up pensions and healthcare. They denied taxpayer dollars would be used.
As it’s written, the Miners Protection Act would use a chunk of the $490 million available in the Abandoned Land Mine program. That fund, established in the 1970s, was traditionally used to pay for environmental and economic recovery for communities ravaged by mining.
Greszler said under the AML’s current construction, only interest earned by the fund could be used to pay for benefit and pension costs. She set that total at $30 million per year – an amount that would do little to shore up shortfalls.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, sponsored the Miners Protection Act. Requests for comments on how the bill would be funded weren’t returned on Friday.
Finance committee member Sen. Dan Coats, R-Indiana, voted against the bill. In a statement to the Courier & Press, Coats spokesman Matt Lahr called the bill a bailout.
“Senator Coats has great sympathy for retired coal workers, many of whom live in Indiana,” Lahr said. “The senator does not support federal bailouts of private pensions, especially when many pension plans across the country are underfunded by trillions and could ask for their own bailout. Senator Coats does not believe that Congress should expose taxpayers to trillions in liabilities, especially when our debt is climbing to dangerous levels and the largest retiree benefit plans for taxpayers – Social Security and Medicare – are headed for bankruptcy.”
A similar bill, an update to the Coal Healthcare and Pensions Protection Act, languishes in the House. No committee votes have been scheduled for it.
Meanwhile, the Senate is embroiled in testy budget debates over how to avoid another shutdown. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30 so it’s highly unlikely the Miners Protection Act will get a hearing until after the election.
Then it would be heard by a lame-duck Senate. Historically, such sessions are either unproductive and largely ceremonial, or furiously busy. The latter types, though, are often occupied by large-scale legislation such as spending bills, national defense or tax cuts. There are exceptions: In 2014, Congress passed 296 laws in a lame-duck session. But it did so to avoid becoming the least-productive Congress in history.
The Miners Protection Act was originally supposed to clear committee a week earlier, according to several speakers at the Sept. 8 rally, which large contingents of retired miners from Evansville, Boonville and Henderson attended. But at the time of the rally, the bill hadn’t been scheduled for a committee vote. It was eventually kicked to Wednesday, when it passed.
Smith did point to a statement from UMWA president Cecil Roberts that was posted on the union’s website on Wednesday.
“Now that this important first step has been achieved, it is vital that Congress move as quickly as possible to finally pass this legislation that will mean so much to the lives of thousands of senior citizens across America,” Roberts said. “There is no more time to waste.”