Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I rise today to express the urgent need to take up and pass a piece of legislation which has great meaning for me and my fellow West Virginians and which is important to our Nation's coal-mining community, and that is the Miners Protection Act.

Seventy years ago, in 1946, President Harry Truman secured an agreement committing the Federal Government to protect lifetime health and pension benefits for our Nation's miners. These men and women earned this care through their tireless and often very dangerous work to produce the coal that has powered our Nation and spurred economic growth for years.

Over the course of seven decades, Congress has kept their promise. In 1992, a bipartisan effort in Congress led by my predecessor, Senator Rockefeller, resulted in the passage of the Coal Act to address the health care needs of orphaned coal miners. Those are miners whose companies are no longer in existence.

In 2006, I voted for legislation that built upon the Coal Act and continued the bipartisan congressional tradition, fulfilling our promise to coal miners and their families and retirees and protecting their promised health care benefits.

In 2012, the bankruptcy of Patriot Coal placed the health care of more than 12,000 retirees and dependents at risk. A temporary solution, which has been going on for a couple of years, has preserved health care for these individuals, but that short-term solution is nearing an end.

Additional coal industry bankruptcies--and I feel like we hear about one a week, and they are major--have threatened health care benefits for more families.

If we don't act now, health care for more than 21,000 miners and families will be lost by the end of this year--just 6 months from now.

West Virginians really know what mining has meant to our State and to our Nation, and our miners have depended on these benefits. Every day I am reminded of this.

Char from Bob White, WV--and Bob White is the name of the little town he lives in--recently wrote to me:

We are desperate. Our benefits are about to lapse unless we get this legislation passed. It cannot be ignored again. Many retired miners cannot afford to pay for their medications if we lose our health care.

Kenneth, who lives in Mullens, WV, said:

It seems more and more that the attack on coal is no longer an industry attack but one that is personal on individuals.

He went on to ask this question: ``What about folks like me that worked hard their entire life?''

Recognizing the significance of this problem, I joined with Congressman David McKinley to introduce legislation in 2013 that addressed both the retiree health care and the looming insolvency of the mine workers' multiemployer pension bill.

Last year, Senator Manchin and I introduced the Miners Protection Act, a very similar bill. This bill demands immediate action. We need to follow through with our commitment to all the hard-working West Virginians and other coal miners across this country. In addition to addressing the health care needs of retirees through the same mechanisms supported by Congress in 1993 and 2006, the Miners Protection Act will ensure the solvency of the multiemployer pension plan that provides benefits to almost 90,000 retirees and surviving spouses. More than 27,000 of those--nearly one-third--live in my home State of West Virginia. The Miners Protection Act uses unobligated funds authorized by the 2006 AML reauthorization bill to support existing mine-working health and pension programs.

Let's be clear. Mining retirees do not receive lavish benefits. The average pension payment is only $560 per month. But these funds are vital to our retirees who live on very small fixed incomes. They are a key part of a local economy in West Virginia and other States where these retirees live.

If we fail to act, the pension plan will become insolvent, imposing projected liabilities of over $4 billion on the PBGC, known as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. If we pass the Miners Protection Act, the pension plan will remain in good standing, benefiting taxpayers, beneficiaries, and coal communities.

In May, the trustees of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds announced that contributions to the pension fund have dropped by nearly two-thirds from last year's level. This just shows you how devastated our coal communities are.

The continued regulatory assault on the coal industry has hastened this decline and threatened the retirement security of our miners. In 2001, the EPA finalized the mercury and air toxins rule for coal plants. Since that time, our Nation has lost more than 40,000 coal jobs, and 1,000 of those workers are West Virginians. Our State's unemployment is among the highest in the country for this very reason. The impact of other EPA proposals, like the Clean Power Plan, which has been stayed by the Supreme Court, and the stream protection rule that is currently being finalized, would make the situation even worse in our coal communities.

As I have said many times before, the negative regulatory impact on coal extends far beyond the tens of thousands of families who are most directly affected. A loss of coal severance tax revenue has triggered drastic budget problems for our State, which we just got a 1-year solution for, and a lot of our local governments are having to lay off county workers and school workers and schoolteachers.

The severe impact on the health care pensions of our miners is another consequence of the administration's War on Coal.

Given that Federal policies have played a major role in causing this problem, it is appropriate for the Federal Government to fulfill its commitment to retiring miners who will lose their promised benefits unless we act.

The Miners Protection Act is critically important to so many people in my State and across this country. We need to keep the promise of lifetime health care for those retired coal miners whose companies have gone through bankruptcy, and we need to make sure our retirees receive the pension benefits they have worked so hard for.

The Miners Protection Act is a truly bipartisan effort. It is supported by Democrats and Republicans and Independents in the Senate. There are 72 cosponsors on the House bill, including 39 Republicans and 33 Democrats.

West Virginians understand that this need not be a political football. As Thomas from Shady Spring, WV, put it, ``This issue is not partisan; this is an easy fix to funding promised pensions.''

It is important this bill be enacted this year before the temporary solution expires and ends the health care benefits for so many retirees and before the continued downturn takes an even greater toll on the pension fund.

I will continue to work with my colleagues in the West Virginia delegation, including Senator Manchin, Congressman McKinley, Congressman Mooney, and Congressman Jenkins, and all of the other cosponsors of this legislation, to see it become law before it is too late.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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