McConnell blocks $1 billion to help coal miners

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked $1 billion for job creation and economic development for coal communities.

The United Mine Workers of America’s retirement and health-care funds support about 120,000 former miners and their families.

It may run out of cash before summer is over even though the average monthly benefit is $530.

Administration officials reintroduced the proposal in the 2017 budget plan.

Republican leaders have shown little interest in backing initiatives from a White House they view as adversarial to coal. McConnell repeatedly refers to “Obama’s war on coal.”

But some Republicans, most notably Kentucky’s Rep. Harold Rogers, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have pushed for congressional approval of key elements of the plan, including an appropriations in the December budget deal to expand job training and Internet access in the coal belt and to hire ex-miners to clean up abandoned mines.

The federal government has promised over the years to not let the UMW fund go out of business.

After World War II, with miners threatening to strike, President Harry S. Truman ordered his secretary of the Interior to negotiate an agreement with the president of the union on pension and healthcare benefits.

Decades later, in 1992, Congress passed the Coal Act, requiring companies to continue contributing to pension plans for all covered retired employees.

The four largest U.S. miners by output -- Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy and Alpha Natural Resources -- which account for nearly half of USA production, were worth a combined $34 billion in 2011. Today they are worth $150 million.

Coal production has declined precipitously in recent years. Finger-pointing has increased incrementally. Meanwhile, the current and former coal miners suffer from the political ping-pong game.

To read the Washington Post article, click on https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/09/a-huge-coal-miners-pension-plan-is-on-the-brink-of-failure-one-senator-is-blocking-a-fix/