Trump supports miners’ health care fund

WASHINGTON – West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said Wednesday President Donald Trump has agreed to urge Congress to preserve health care benefits for retired coal workers in the short-term budget bill up for a vote this week.

Manchin said he talked with Trump by phone and that the president said he’d do “everything it took” to provide funding for the miners’ benefits that are due to expire Saturday under a previous temporary budget fix.

The retired miners, many who suffer from black lung disease, are on tenterhooks because their union health care fund is insolvent from the effects of the shrinking coal industry and fewer miners paying into the fund.

They also want permanent funding of their pension fund, which is expected to run out of money within two years. Both health and pension benefits had been financed by payments from now-bankrupt coal companies under an agreement reached 70 years ago with President Harry Truman to end a national coal strike.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday before dozens of coal miners, Manchin and other legislators from coal states said they are prepared to keep Congress in session as long as it takes to get agreement on a permanent solution to the issue.

Some 23,000 miners stand to lose their health care if Congress doesn’t act.

Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., said House Speaker Paul Ryan is now open to provide permanent instead of only temporary funding for the miners.

“Promises were made and promises need to be kept,” said. McKinley

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., described it as “an issue of fairness.”

Contact CNHI Washington reporter Kery Murakami at kmurakami@cnhi.com.