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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA huge coal miners’ pension plan is on the brink of failure. One senator is blocking a fix.
Despite bipartisan support for a plan to save the workers' retirement and healthcare, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stands in the way.
I brought along this unemployed coal miner here, McConnell (R-Ky.) said, gesturing to fourth-generation mineworker Howard Abshire, to see the person who put him out of work.
The Senate majority leader said he wanted to call attention to President Obamas heartless regulations that he argues have devastated communities in Abshires native eastern Kentucky. Yet just weeks earlier, McConnells office had delivered its own blow to Appalachian coal towns: It blocked efforts to rescue health and pension funds on which thousands of retired and disabled miners rely.
A plan that would ensure the solvency of the funds nearly made it through Congress in December as part of the bipartisan budget deal that cleared both chambers. But the bailout attempt backed by key lawmakers from both political parties was excluded from the deal at McConnells request, according to four Senate officials directly familiar with the events.
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/
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)wait, let me check the calendar, yep it's now July, do you have an update?
edhopper
(33,574 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 4, 2016, 07:13 PM - Edit history (1)
and front page status of the thread.
It seems most DUers are interested and don't care that it is only a few months old.
Is there a statute of limitation on McConnell's douchebaggery?
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)So what was the outcome? What happened to the pensions?
So, okay, you didn't post it in Latest Breaking News, but it's still both old news and an incomplete story.
I'm guessing that for you a review of "Our American Cousin" that mentions an outburst of some kind halfway through Act III, without giving the result of that outburst would be perfectly fine. I'm just weird in that I think follow-up is actually important. Clearly to you it's not.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Your telling me the Republicans are concerned about the people who own the mines, not the actual miners? I'm shocked... Shocked, I tell you.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)spanone
(135,828 posts)Since being laid off in 2008, amid the global economic meltdown and a contraction in the coal industry, Dilly has received about $300 a month in pension benefits.
Now, Dillys retirement money is in jeopardy. The health and pension funds that Dilly and more than 100,000 other coal miners across the United States rely on are threatened with financial insolvency.
Ohios two U.S. senators Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman are among those pushing for a legislative fix that supporters say would protect the coal miners hard-earned benefits, without costing taxpayers anything. The bill has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats and Republicans from Pennsylvania, Indiana, and West Virginia leading an aggressive push to pass the measure before the end of the year.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/07/03/senators-face-off-over-bill-help-retired-coal-miners/86605246/
spanone
(135,828 posts)the reason mcconnell opposes the bill:
The United Mine Workers Union of America endorsed McConnells Democratic opponent, Alison Grimes, in the 2014 election, and the unions political action committee spent more than $300,000 trying to defeat McConnell.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/07/03/senators-face-off-over-bill-help-retired-coal-miners/86605246/
47of74
(18,470 posts)....Mitch McFuckstick.
catbyte
(34,375 posts)He makes me physically ill.