Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I am really pleased to be here to join in the colloquy with my fellow Senators, Mr. Manchin, Senator Brown from Ohio, and Senator Warner from Virginia.
This is important. This is really important. I could say I look around the room, and it is important to us, but it is important even more granularly to some other folks who are right here watching what we are doing.
Many of us have worked together previously in order to save retiree health benefits for 22,000 retired miners in 2017, following the bankruptcies of Patriot, Alpha, and Walter Resources. Today we are back together to advocate for another over 1,000 retirees and beneficiaries whose healthcare is impacted by the Westmoreland Coal bankruptcy, as Senator Manchin described.
It is also critical that we redouble our efforts to find a solution to the 1974 UMWA Pension Fund. If we do nothing--if we do nothing, which I don't believe is an option--this pension fund, which provides 83,000 current beneficiaries with their pensions, will be insolvent by 2022. That is getting close, and insolvency can come even sooner, depending on market conditions.
So combined with the 20,000 people who have a vested right to future benefits, more than 100,000 people are covered by this pension plan. As Senator Manchin said, these are hard-working people who were promised and who, in the course of their working lives, gave up something so they could have a better peace of mind later on. They worked hard day in and day out. They powered our communities and industries and helped our country achieve greatness, even in the toughest times, and they did that with the promise of healthcare and a pension that would allow them to live with dignity in retirement.
We are not talking about lavish pensions. I think this is an important point. The average benefit paid by this fund is $560 per month. These retirees are not getting rich on their pension plans, and they are not taking lavish expenditures, but without this monthly benefit, many of them would be living on the edge of poverty, if they are not already.
One miner from Logan, WV, who worked in the mines for 36 years wrote:
Please keep fighting for our pension. I receive $303.34 monthly. We need this badly to help pay for food, medicine, and other bills.
Another retired miner from Richwood, WV, who worked in the mines for 17 years, wrote that his monthly check of $192 ``is not a lot of money, but it means a lot,'' and on top of that, he earned it. It helps him make his ends meet.
Another miner from Kistler, WV, who mined for over 35 years, expressed concern that he might not be able to pay his expenses or help his daughter in college without that monthly pension check.
Failing to fix the pension fund would have a terrible impact on communities where many of these miners live. More than 25,000 pension fund beneficiaries live in the State of West Virginia, and they received $200 million in benefits last year. If they didn't spend that money in their community supporting businesses and other jobs in our coalfield communities--if you subtract those funds out of the community, you would have a significant economic blow.
We have a solution that will prevent the insolvency of the pension fund and protect our retired miners, their families, and their communities. We should pass legislation that expands the use of the same transfer of payments used to support retiree healthcare to make the pension fund solvent. I have supported various forms of that kind of legislation over the years, but as we come closer to the time-- 2022--when the pension fund will become insolvent, we must redouble our efforts. That is why I appreciate Senator Manchin's advocacy. I appreciate his sense of urgency, and I share that.
At the same time, our West Virginia representatives, along with representatives from the States--David McKinley, Alex Mooney, and Carol Miller--are leading a bipartisan effort in the House to fix this problem as well.
I will keep fighting alongside all of you and all of them and others I see until we enact a solution that keeps the promise of our hard- working coal miners.
Thank you.
I yield back.
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