Deirdre Shesgreen

USATODAY

WASHINGTON — For nearly two decades, David H. Dilly worked as a strip miner for Simco-Peabody’s now abandoned mine in Coshocton, where he helped remove layers of soil and rock to unearth Ohio’s rich coal beds.

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, Dilly’s 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.

Ohio’s 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.

But the bill has at least one powerful foe in Congress: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who portrays himself as a staunch defender of his home-state’s coal industry.

“McConnell … has opposed this because he doesn’t like the United Mine Workers Union,” said Brown. “We could win this on a straight up or down vote,” the Ohio Democrat added, but McConnell has blocked such a move.

The United Mine Workers Union of America endorsed McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Alison Grimes, in the 2014 election, and the union’s political action committee spent more than $300,000 trying to defeat McConnell.

Robert Steurer, a spokesman for McConnell, did not directly answer questions about whether the senator was blocking the bill. Steurer also declined to spell out McConnell’s position on the proposal, saying only that he wants the bill to go through “regular order.”

“Senator McConnell has been and remains committed to helping ensure the retirement security of our nation's retirees, including coal miners,” Steurer said in an emailed statement. “He appreciates the importance of this issue to many affected coal communities in Kentucky and around the country and continues to believe this issue deserves an open, transparent debate through regular order.”

At the center of the legislative standoff is a 12-page bill called the Miners Protection Act. The bill would transfer excess money from the Abandoned Mine Land fund — a coal mine clean-up program — to the 1974 United Mine Workers of America Pension Plan, which now pays benefits to about 120,000 retirees.

While it’s a private, multi-employer pension fund, the UMWA plan has a special guarantee from the federal government — secured in 1946 when then-President Harry Truman’s administration helped negotiate a contract with mine workers who were threatening to strike.

Under that agreement, “coal miners made a commitment to provide the nation with much-needed energy even at the risk of their lives and health in often dangerous conditions,” UMWA International President Cecil Roberts told a Senate Finance Committee hearing in March. In exchange, he said, the government promised to ensure miners have health care and pension benefits upon retirement.

Brown and others say the UMWA pension and health care plans were on sound financial footing until the 2008 economic meltdown. But then both the coal industry and the UMWA funds were devastated by the recession.

Coal's demise threatens Appalachian miners, firms as production moves West

Now, with the coal industry in sharp decline, the workers’ health care and pension plans cannot recover.

“The plan has too few assets, too few employers, and too few union workers now paying in,” Brown said in a speech last month on the Senate floor. “If Congress fails to act, thousands of retired miners would lose their health care this year and the entire plan could fail as early as next year.”

Right now, about 6,500 Ohio retired coal miners receive these benefits, said Phil Smith, government affairs director of the mine workers union. In Kentucky, that number is approximately 10,000 retirees, he said.

“If we don’t get new money into this pension plan through this legislation within the next 12 to 18 months, that fund will be past the point of no return,” Smith said.

Coal group: No doubts about McConnell's support

Congress was on the cusp of passing the Miners’ Protection Act last December, when supporters pushed to have it included in a massive, must-pass spending bill. But according to a February story in The Washington Post, McConnell blocked that effort at the last minute. Two Senate staffers confirmed McConnell’s actions to USA TODAY.

Others said McConnell has privately made it clear that he opposes the bill, although not because he doesn’t like the mine workers’ union.

“He is opposed to this in principle and sees it would be a bailout and would set a dangerous precedent” for the government to rescue a private pension fund, said Rachel Greszler, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

In an analysis she wrote in March, Greszler blasted the miners’ bill as an irresponsible bailout that would force non-union coal companies — which also pay into the coal clean-up fund — to subsidize the union companies’ pension plan.

The Miners’ Protection Act would force all non-union coal companies to “prop up their competitors by further subsidizing their over-promised and underfunded health and pension benefits,” she wrote.

In an interview, Greszler said non-union coal companies are “very, very upset” about the bill. She declined to name any specific companies.

Greszler, who said she has talked to McConnell’s staff about the bill, said McConnell is torn between his policy objections to the measure and pressure from other Republicans who want him to let it advance.

Last week, Portman, Brown, and several other senators tried — unsuccessfully — to stall legislation to help Puerto Rico with its debt unless the Senate also advanced the mine workers’ bill. Although they didn’t stop the Puerto Rico bill, the senators did secure a promise that the miners’ legislation would get a vote in the Senate Finance Committee.

Portman and others said they expected the panel would approve the bill overwhelmingly, giving the legislation momentum for a full Senate vote before the end of the year. But others feared it would be jammed up, as lawmakers rush through a spate of must-pass bills and then hit the campaign trail before November.

In the meantime, Dilly said he and other coal miners are anxious and perplexed about the congressional inaction.

“It’s kind of a mystery as to why we can’t get it passed,” he said. “Coal miners like us, all we’ve ever done is worked our whole lives and they’re up there playing games.”