By Siobhan Hughes and Byron Tau
WASHINGTON--The Senate on Friday night passed a short-term
spending bill to fund the government through April after Democrats
pulled back from a threat to hold up the bill over a dispute
involving health benefits for retired coal miners.
The measure passed, 63-36, after Democrats forced Republicans to
engage in a nail-biting search for votes to clear a procedural
hurdle. Its passage reflected a desire by both parties to keep the
government open past Saturday, when funding was set to expire. The
White House announced early Saturday that President Barack Obama
had signed the bill.
The debate and tension surrounding the vote provided a preview
of the battles shaping up for next year, when President-elect
Donald Trump is sworn into office and Democrats intend to pressure
him and his GOP colleagues to live up to campaign promises that
drew white, working-class voters into the Republican column.
In a show of frustration, 22 Democrats and one independent,
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voted against the spending bill,
following the lead of Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), who had set up
a blockade against the measure to bring renewed attention to the
plight of retired coal miners and their widows, whose health plans
were due to lapse at the end of the year. The government-funding
bill will extend those benefits for an additional four months, a
timetable Democrats said was insufficient.
"How do you think we won World War I and World War II? Domestic
energy," Mr. Manchin said to reporters. "Where do you think it came
from? It came from out of the ground," he said, complaining that
the country needed to show more courtesy to the workforce that met
its energy needs.
For nearly an hour before the bill passed, the Senate was
transfixed by the prospect that Republicans might come up short in
their bid to round up 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle.
Democrats held back votes, prompting GOP leaders to pressure
coal-country Republicans such as Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to
vote in favor of advancing the bill.
Mr. Manchin had sought to rustle up enough opposition to block
the spending bill, which keeps the government running through April
28. Current funding had been set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Eastern
Standard Time on Saturday. Although Mr. Manchin came up short,
Senate Minority Leader-elect Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) promised to
continue the fight next year.
The health benefits were slated to run out for more than 16,000
miners at the end of December. Four more months, Mr. Manchin said,
"is not only a nonstarter, that is inhumane. "
The centrist Democrat is under consideration by Mr. Trump's
transition team as a possible secretary of state or energy. Mr.
Manchin, who is up for re-election in 2018, was scheduled to meet
with Mr. Trump on Monday.
The spending bill passed the House on Thursday in a 326-96
vote.
Pointing to the overwhelming House vote, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor Friday that it
was too late to make changes to the bill. But he said he was
confident Congress wouldn't let the miners' health-care benefits
expire in the spring, when the extension ends.
"It is my intention that miners' health benefits not expire in
April. I'm going to work with my colleagues to prevent that," Mr.
McConnell said. "This is a good time [for Democrats] to take yes
for an answer."
Earlier in the day, White House spokesman Eric Schultz expressed
support for the stand that Mr. Manchin and others were taking on
the issue of coal-miner health benefits.
"These are coal miners who work for decades in treacherous
conditions and who earn these benefits. Unfortunately, the proposal
that Republicans are floating only takes care for them for a few
months. We believe that's not right," Mr. Schultz said Friday.
The root of this week's fight goes back decades. The United Mine
Workers of America won promises from the federal government for
lifetime pension and retiree health benefits for its members,
starting in 1946 under President Harry Truman.
Over the years, the funding of miners' pension and retiree
health benefits has become problematic as coal companies have
declared bankruptcy, leaving fewer companies to contribute to
multiemployer plans, and retirees began to outnumber active miners
amid greater automation.
Congress passed measures in the 1990s and 2000s to shore up the
benefits, including allowing the interest from the Abandoned Mine
Lands fund to be used to cover retiree health costs. The fund,
originally created to pay for the cleanup of abandoned mine sites,
is fed by taxes on coal companies.
In 2006, Congress allowed the use of general U.S. Treasury funds
to cover any deficit in the UMWA retiree health plan for the first
time, as well as to pay out money to states and tribes that had
already cleaned up their abandoned mines.
Today, the union says about 16,300 retired miners and widows
could lose their health coverage on Jan. 1 if Congress doesn't
appropriate funding.
There is currently about $39 million in funding for retiree
health care and roughly $100 million is paid out annually,
according to Phil Smith, a UMWA spokesman.
Cecil Roberts, president of the UMWA, has called the proposal to
provide four months of funding "a slap in the face" to coal
miners.
"America's miners put their lives on the line to provide the
fuel that built our nation," Mr. Roberts said. "Is their reward to
become a perpetual political football, doomed to beg every four
months for the benefits they earned and our nation promised
them?"
At the same time, the union and members of Congress from coal
states are seeking additional funding to keep the UMWA 1974 Pension
Plan from becoming insolvent. The plan currently covers 89,000
retirees and widows and has been in critical status for the past
two years.
The union says retirees in the pension plan live in all 50
states, though a majority reside in West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Kentucky, Illinois and other major coal-producing states. The
average pension benefit is $586 a month for a retired miner or a
surviving spouse, according to the union.
Kristina Peterson and Kris Maher contributed to this
article.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Byron Tau
at byron.tau@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 10, 2016 01:31 ET (06:31 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.