Coal state senators push new legislation to shore up miners' pensions

Lawmakers gathered in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to press for fresh legislation to shore up pensions for about 117,000 union coal miners at risk of losing their retirement savings amid a coal industry decline.

Yet significant political hurdles remain, even after Congress managed to extend health care benefits for 22,000 retired miners in May just as those benefits were set to expire.

The American Miners Pension Act has the same goal as the Miners Protection Act, which was heavily pushed by coal state senators and ultimately stuffed into a short-term spending bill last December that funded the government for four months.

In the U.S. Capitol Building on Tuesday, the same coalition of lawmakers — led by West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican — explained that the new bill would redirect surplus funds from an abandoned mine reclamation program into a United Mine Workers of America pension fund teetering on the brink of insolvency.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2017/10/03/Lawmakers-bill-coal-miners-retirees-pension-act/stories/201710040010