Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer, my colleague from Ohio, and my colleague from West Virginia.

This is a critical issue. I rise today to join my colleagues in supporting the bipartisan Miners Protection Act. We are here to make sure the Federal Government makes good on its promise of lifetime benefits for miners who risked their lives to help our country meet its energy needs.

As has been noted, President Truman and the Federal Government made a promise with the 1946 Krug-Lewis Agreement to guarantee health and pension benefits for coal miners. These workers and the generations that followed sacrificed their own long-term health and now they are depending on us to make sure they get the benefits they earned.

My friend from West Virginia said that there are 27,000 miners in his State. We have 3,000 retired miners receiving pension benefits and another 1,500 receiving health benefits. Many of them are in the southern part of my State. Similarly, there are tens of thousands of other retirees--90,500-plus--across the Nation in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky. These retired miners and their families face a financial emergency unless we act now.

Additionally, Congress must work to address broader problems in the multiemployer pension system, which is on the verge of crisis as well. Many plans, such as the Central States Pension Fund, which includes hundreds of thousands of retired Teamsters, are dangerously underfunded. We owe it to these hardworking Americans who did their job to do our job and to solve this problem. This is a bipartisan proposal. It isn't about Republicans and Democrats. It is about Americans coming together to help the 90,000-plus miners and their beneficiaries who face an imminent loss of the benefits they have earned.

They have earned these benefits. This is nothing being given to them. They have earned this everyday--walking into those mines, working nonstop and facing incredible dangers, and powering our country. We can start meeting our responsibility by scheduling a vote and passing this commonsense legislation.

We made a promise to these coal miners, and we take this promise seriously. They did their part for decade after decade. We can't turn our backs on them. That is not the American way. It is not the Indiana way. It is not the Ohio way. It is not the West Virginia way.

I urge the Senate to take up this bipartisan Miners Protection Act as soon as possible because tens of thousands of retirees, our friends and neighbors, and our fellow Americans are counting on us to do our job and keep the word that has been given to them.

I yield back.

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