WASHINGTON— Today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) joined his colleagues from West Virginia and Ohio to call on a key Senate Committee to act on the Miners Protection Act.

In a bipartisan colloquy on the Senate floor, Sens. Warner and Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Rob Portman (R-OH) pushed the Senate to move on the legislation, which will protect the health and pension benefits of an estimated 120,000 retired miners across the country, including 10,000 retirees in Virginia.

 The bipartisan Miners Protection Act would take leftover funds from a federal government program that cleans-up abandoned mines and use it to strengthen an underfunded United Mineworkers of American health and pension fund that’s almost out of money after several recent coal company bankruptcies. 

Senator Warner's full remarks are below:

Thank you, Mr. President. I want to start by echoing what Senator Brown and Senator Capito and others have said. And thanking my friend, the Senator from West Virginia, for continuing to wage this fight. It feels a little bit like deja vu all over again. We have been down here time and time and time again to simply reinforce the case that the Senator from West Virginia just went through in terms of history. I think it's sometimes interesting that I’m sure the Senator from Virginia -- but it was the early 1990's the first time I went underground and see the working conditions that miners across this country, even with advances in technology and 21st century still endure. It's hard work. It's gritty work. Many of the miners who spent years working underground come out with black lung, other illnesses. Their life expectancy is much shorter than so many other jobs.

The Senator from West Virginia has already gone true at some length. Our historic commitment to these miners started with President Truman, was renewed a variety of times, Democrats and Republicans alike. And through this past year again because of the Senator from West Virginia and those of us who tried to help and his states got the most. Probably Kentucky has the second most. Virginia has about 10,000 folks that are affected.

We did finally force -- and I want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden. We did have the hearing. And families came in and all they said was -- to us was keep your promise. The United States of America, we said we're going to honor this commitment to make sure your pension benefits and your health care benefits are honored. The remarkable thing here, there are many folks including myself who were greatly concerned about our debt and deficit. How are we going to pay for this?

We've identified a source of funding that is industry generated. So many of the typical while maybe not now, what if or how does this happen, all of those issues have been addressed. The Miners Protection Act that the Finance Committee held a hearing on and miners from southwest Virginia came in, a couple of folks from Grundy, couple folks from Wise, close to the state of West Virginia, close to Ohio, folks whose lives were going to be dramatically affected if these benefits, these health care benefits and pension benefits are taken away. And disproportionately, as the Senator from West Virginia has repeatedly said, the vast majority of these individuals candidly are not former miners but they're the widows because so many folks have passed that are now widows that depend upon these benefits in many ways that are still the life blood of communities that have been hard hit by the changing of power, by government regulation, by a host of other things.

So last week on that incredibly warm day, the good friend, the Senator from Ohio and I were there speaking to miners from all across the country and others who were supportive of the cause. And the question I got as I walked through the crowd was, are you guys going to keep your word? Not Democrat, Republican, not particulars of the bill. Are you going to keep your word that this country made to the coal miners and their beneficiaries that their pension and health care benefits are going to be honored?

 We're going to be tested on this at least in terms of the next step. My hope and expectation had been as a member of the Finance Committee and my friend, the Senator from Ohio, a member of the Finance Committee and in this case we have the support of the Chairman, the Ranking Member. We would – remember that we would mark up this legislation, that we wouldn't add extraneous other things that would take us off course or take us down some -- into some other briar patch but that we would honor this commitment on the UMWA health and pension benefits. As things often happen here, it got delayed.

But I for one don't believe even if we get our C.R. done, get Zika done, that the Finance Committee should leave town without having this markup. That commitment was made earlier in the year. I went through a whole group of folks, not just from Virginia but from West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky and said, yes, I believe we'll at least get the next step done and get this bill marked up out of Finance Committee and it should be then not just got out of Finance Committee, it's actually got to be acted upon here on the floor of the senate. We've all gone through the facts and the details on the variety of times that we have spoken to this issue on the floor.

My appeal, Mr. President, is that to my friends, the Chair and the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee that this date on the 21st does not slip again. I know in that committee markup, we will have the votes. We need to get that bill reported out. We need to get it acted on before the end of the year because as the Senator from West Virginia has so relentlessly continued to make the point, this is not something that we can kick the can on anymore. People start losing these benefits that their lives depend on at the end of calendar year 2016. So I say to my friend from West Virginia and the Senator from Ohio, we are on this together. It is bipartisan. There aren't enough things that are done bipartisan here. I thank my friend from West Virginia for being relentless on this issue. I thank my friend, the Senator from Ohio who's -- sometimes it's an issue that looks like it's stacking up more one side than the other, his leadership on this as well.

I tell you, I think we owe it to those miners and to the families that depend upon these benefits that we keep our word, keep the word we told them we were going to keep back when we held the hearing -- keep the word that all of us said to the miners and others who rallied last week in the middle of that heat, we do our job next Wednesday, we'll be able to keep our word, bring this bill to the floor and get it passed. With that, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia and yield back my time.

# # #