21st Century Cures Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise to join my colleague who spoke earlier today, the Senator from Ohio, and here shortly, the Senator from Pennsylvania. I wish to also thank my friend, the Senator from West Virginia. Without his tireless efforts, this cause we are fighting for might not still have a chance, and I want to commend him for the countless hours and the amazing amount of work he has done on an issue we have been here time and again on; that is, begging this body to take meaningful action on the Miners Protection Act before the end of this year.

For over a year and a half, we have been coming to the floor to tell our colleagues that if we do nothing, retired coal miners and their families--for the most part we are talking about widows because most of the miners have passed away--will lose their health care at the end of this year. Well, the end of the year is upon us. It is literally days away, and we have taken every procedural step to ensure a vote on the Miners Protection Act.
Under the leadership of the Senator from West Virginia, we were asked to go through regular order. We were asked to have a hearing. Those of us on the Finance Committee--the Senator from Pennsylvania and I--were asked to have a committee markup. We had the committee markup. We reported the bill out with strong bipartisan support. Yet here we are, days away from the supposed end of the session, and we still have not had that vote. We have a long-term bipartisan solution, but instead we are being told the CR that might simply fund the government for a few months may have some kind of stop-gap effort--a stop-gap effort that would barely provide enough time, for those who were already threatened with losing their health care at the end of the year--barely have enough time to even reschedule a doctor's appointment.

These miners--many of them have faced devastating illnesses as a result of their time in the mines--will be given absolutely no certainty that they will receive the medical care they need if we simply were to extend this bill to the time of the CR. And what would happen after May 1? And that has nothing to say to the more than 100,000 miners across the country--thousands of them in my State of Virginia--who lose not only health care but also future pension benefits that are threatened by the approaching insolvency of the United Mine Workers 1974 pension fund.

Madam President, you may not know this--as a matter of fact, even my colleague from West Virginia didn't realize this--but today, December 6, is actually National Miners Day. Each year on December 6, we set aside a day to honor the mine workers of today and yesterday and reflect on their contributions to our Nation and rededicate ourselves to doing everything we can to protect their lives and health. Think about that. Today is actually National Miners Day. What better day to take the long awaited action to make sure that for those miners--and particularly, more often than not, for their widows--we honor the commitment that was made back in 1947 to make sure that their health care and pension benefits--at least their health care benefits--are guaranteed. The reality is that even with stronger safety standards, coal mining remains a dangerous and difficult profession. The truth is that nobody can really understand what it is like to be in a mine unless you have been underground. I have had that opportunity a number of times in my career. So many of the miners I worked with and supported when I was Governor and now as I am a Senator have seen all the changes that have come about by the changing nature of the industry, by globalization and by technology. Now many of those communities are on hard times. If we produce one more hit to these communities--a hit whereby the Federal Government doesn't honor the commitment they made to those miners in terms of protecting the health care of the miners and their families--then, quite honestly, we are not doing our job.

We have come together and worked in a bipartisan fashion. We have a solution. We have a solution that wouldn't add to the debt or the deficit. I hope that those who are holding up this long-term solution-- and it is not simply one side. We have complete support on this side of the aisle and from a number of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Again, we ask: Let's make sure these miners, their widows, and their families don't lose their health care come the end of this year.

We can ensure that happens, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to make sure that promise becomes a reality.

With that, I yield the floor to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

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