Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. President.

First, let me pay tribute to the steadfastness, the strength, and the courage of my friend from West Virginia. As Senator McCaskill said, not a day goes by where he doesn't remind us of the coal miners and their plight.

Last night, through his good offices, I met with some of these miners. They are not from my State either.
I looked into their eyes--hard-working people, many of them tired, not from the day, not from lobbying here--that is easy work for them-- but from working in those mines for so many years. They are America.
They are the people we owe so much to.

Having met them, seen them, and looked into their eyes, I understood why my dear friend from West Virginia and my friends from Virginia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota have such passion for these people. It is real.

I hope some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the next month will be visited by these very miners. Look them in the eye, and tell them you can't help them? I bet you can't. I bet you can't.

We are here to live up to a promise made by Harry Truman, backed up by legislation in this body over and over. I don't care what your ideology is. I don't care if you are a big government cutter. This is not the place to cut. This is the place to recognize hard work, a promise, and America, because we say to people: If you work hard, we are going to be there for you. But tonight, we are barely there for you. We are not cutting it off, but we are not doing right by the people I met last night through the auspices of the Senator from West Virginia, fine people who got to my heart.

So we believe deeply in preserving these benefits, and we also believe in not hurting other people to preserve these benefits. So we are not going to shut down the government; we are going to keep it open. That would hurt millions of Americans as well and take millions out of the economy. So we are going to provide the votes to make sure we don't shut down, although there are so many people who want to stand with the miners. We never intended to shut down the government, but our intention is very real--first, to highlight the seriousness of this issue, not to let people think this is going to go away because they didn't live up to their promise. And I think we have made our point. I don't care if people don't like being here on a Friday night. I know people have other obligations, but those obligations are nothing compared to our obligation to these miners.

Leader McConnell spoke to Senator Manchin a few hours ago and said that he would work hard to make the health benefits for miners not lapse in April. That is good, but it is not close to enough. It is a step forward, but we will go further, hopefully with the majority leader but even without.

We need the finance bill, the Miners Protection Act, a bill that would move money from the Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Fund into a fund to pay for the pension and health care benefits of tens of thousands of coal miners and retirees, not for 3 months, not for 1 year, but permanently. To show how serious we are, every single Democrat within just a few hours cosponsored the miners amendment to the CR, and we did get two Republicans to join us. Welcome. We need more of you. Stand up for the miners.

The fact that we have gotten so many people on this legislation bodes well for our chances of getting something significant done in the new year. So when we return in January, we are going to be looking at every way we can to make sure the miners receive full funding. The sooner the better, the stronger the proposal the better, and we will do it.

Finally, I want to call on President-elect Trump to support our proposal. The President-elect ran on a campaign with explicit, direct promises to coal country, and he won coal country big; that is for sure. He held big rallies with coal workers. He said he would protect them. He talked to the miners and got to know them. So we are simply asking our President-elect to communicate to the people in his party to get on board and live up to the promise we made to miners many years-- decades--ago.

Tonight, we are putting our Republican colleagues on notice. We will not rest until we do right by our miners.

I yield the floor.

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