[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 133 (Saturday, August 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4068-S4069]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    INFLATION REDUCTION ACT OF 2022

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to speak about a very important 
provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that combines the three 
pillars of the act: healthcare, energy, and tax reform. That provision 
is a permanent funding fix for the Black Lung Benefits Program. And I 
dedicate this floor speech to all my friends who are Virginia coal 
miners, to their retirees, to their families. And I especially dedicate 
it to my friends at the United Mine Workers, including a dear friend, 
President Cecil Roberts.
  I came to Virginia in 1984, never having been in Virginia. I grew up 
in Kansas, and I didn't really know too much about the coal industry. 
But I married my wife Anne 38 years ago, and part of her family is from 
Big Stone Gap, VA, in the heart of Appalachia--those counties in 
Southwestern Virginia--Wise, Lee, Dickenson, Russell, Buchanan, Scott--
that have coal mining as the very heart of their economies. And it is 
not only coal mines, but it is the miners themselves--many of whom 
drive across State lines to work in West Virginia or Kentucky--and 
their families. And they have done it for generations.
  And long before I got into politics, once I married my wife from 
Appalachia, I got to know these miners. It is a tough job. It is a 
scary job. It is a dangerous job. But these miners do it every day 
because the Nation needs power, because our steel mills need steel to 
build aircraft carriers and submarines and skyscrapers. And they do 
this, and many of them have done it for generations.
  I also, in coming to know these miners--long before I got into 
politics--on family visits, realized what a patriotic bunch of people 
they are. They have a disproportionately high rate of service in the 
military when they are young, before they undertake this dangerous, 
dangerous job.
  I had been in Virginia for about 5 years, and there was a major 
strike of these miners, the Pittston strike, in Southwest Virginia, 
1989. It actually was from April of 1989 all the way until February of 
1990. And it was a strike that was driven because the Pittston Coal 
Company wanted to take health benefits away from retirees and widows 
and disabled miners.
  And what the mineworkers realized is if they allowed this to happen, 
then every other mining company in the country would do exactly the 
same thing. And so they went out on a strike, and they struck for 10 
months. And their salaries were down to nothing, but they weren't going 
to give up until they got these healthcare benefits.
  There was a famous moment about 5 months into the strike when the 
then-president of the UMW, Rich Trumka, who got to be a great friend of 
ours--sadly, he passed in the last year. At that point, he was the 
president of the mineworkers. He got asked by the New York Times: Your 
people are suffering striking. They are earning some benefits through 
the union, but it is a fraction of their salaries. How long can the 
mine workers hold out?

  And he gave one of the best answers ever: 1 day longer than the 
Pittston Coal Company. That is how long we can hold out.
  That is what they did. In February of 1990, they reached a deal, and 
the healthcare benefits of these folks were saved.
  Getting into politics, first at the local level, but especially when 
I ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2001, I was kind of the big city 
mayor, but people down there gave me a chance because they knew I had 
family ties in Appalachia. I had gotten to know them before I was in 
politics.
  The mine workers were so helpful to me. I tried, over my time in 
political life, to be helpful to them. I put a union president in my 
cabinet as a Governor, whom they knew very, very well, who had struck 
with them in 1989. No Governor had ever done that. I appointed a miner, 
a UMW member to run my State mining safety agency. That agency had 
always been run by folks from the management side or sometimes by hard-
working, you know, kind of professional scientists and bureaucrats. But 
there had never been a miner running the mining safety agency until I 
became Governor.
  I worked with mine workers to build a powerplant in Virginia City, in 
Southwest Virginia, to try to show that coal can be done and used much 
more cleaner than it had been in the past.
  When I came to the Senate in 2013, the economics of mining had 
changed a lot. Natural gas, being so much cheaper, had hurt mines. 
Mechanization of mining reduced the job numbers. We mine about the same 
amount of coal in Virginia today as we did 50 years ago. We just do it 
with one-tenth of the miners because of mechanization.
  The need to bring down our carbon usage to save the planet has 
definitely been a factor. I am proud to say that my miners and their 
leaders understand this. They understand the need for an energy 
transition, and they embrace it. They just ask that, as we do it, we 
don't leave them behind.
  That leads me to this bill. We have made promises to our miners that 
we will protect their health insurance, that we will protect their 
pensions, and that we will have a full-funded Black Lung Benefits 
Program to help the many miners--about one in five in Central 
Appalachia, whose day in and day out job, inhaling coal dust and silica 
dust, exposes them to a horrible pulmonary disease, black lung disease. 
We told them we will have a program for them to take care of their 
needs should they come down with black lung.
  You will remember, Madam President, in 2017, because of bankruptcies 
of coal companies, that many were setting up shell corporations to 
evade their responsibilities to their retirees--just like in Pittston, 
taking health insurance away from retirees, widows, and disabled 
miners. Many companies have schemed with the Bankruptcy Code to do 
that. In 2017, the miners healthcare program for these retirees was on 
death's door. I cosponsored legislation with many colleagues, and we 
saved their healthcare program.
  I will never forget one of the toughest meetings I had in public life 
was going into a mining contact office in Castlewood, VA, and sitting 
down in a room of very nervous people who thought their healthcare 
benefits were going to expire within a matter of weeks. But we made a 
promise to them. And because of Democrats here--and we did get some 
Republican votes on this, as well--we saved healthcare for retirees, 
widows, and disabled miners.
  A couple of years later, in 2019, the same features of these 
companies--artificially, in many instances, going bankrupt--was now not 
just threatening healthcare but was also threatening pensions. People 
who had worked their whole lives in these dangerous jobs at risk to 
their health were going to lose their pensions.
  But in 2019, the American Miners Act, which was also bipartisan, 
passed this body, and we fixed the nationwide pension program for 
miners. It helped more than 6,000 Virginians. It helped more than 
100,000 miners around the country.
  That is two.
  Well, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we can go 
three for three. We can meet all the promises we made to these miners 
and their families by fixing the Black Lung Benefits Program.
  The preceding speaker talked about raising taxes on mines, but he 
didn't tell the public what this is for. We are raising the excise tax 
on coal so that we can have a program that will help miners who get 
black lung disease.
  And is this just a horribly confiscatory tax? No. Let me tell you 
what this tax will be. We will raise the coal excise tax for coal mined 
underground to $1.10 a ton. For these hard-working miners who are 
underground, exposing themselves to life-risking pulmonary disease, we 
will raise the tax to $1.10 a ton. And for coal that is mined on the 
surface, we will raise it to 55 cents a ton to meet the promise that we 
made to these hard-working people. This will provide permanent 
sufficient funding to maintain the solvency of the fund, and our miners 
can be assured that the program will be--as they are going underground 
every day and doing that tough job, they can be assured that the 
program will be there for them should they get black lung disease.

[[Page S4069]]

  I have been proud to cosponsor all three of these bills--promise 
made, promise kept.
  I want to thank Virginia's coal miners for their friendship, for 
their patriotism, for their determination, and for never giving up, 
including never giving up on us. And when we pass the IRA, we will be 
able to say: Your faith was justified. We got it done.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the previous order be 
extended for 15 minutes and the majority leader be recognized at that 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

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