Congress hoped to wrap up work Friday and take a long holiday break, but frustration from some Democrats over a short-term extension to protect healthcare for retired coal miners is threatening to extend work into the weekend, if not next week.
Anger over the miners healthcare issue boiled over Wednesday with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., vowing to filibuster the short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, to keep the government up and running after Friday.
“I am against the CR because the miners got screwed,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “I’m against that CR. I want to shut ‘er down — this is ridiculous — we need an extension of the CR until people come to their senses.”
But the stop-gap spending bill is moving swiftly through Congress with the House expected to pass it Thursday. All spending bills must derive in the House first before moving to the Senate. Any Senate effort to change the continuing resolution after it sails to House passage, as expected, would require House members to return to Washington to pass the new version, an unlikely prospect.
Manchin said he’s not looking to shut the government down over the issue but argued in favor of a very short-term extension into next week to keep funding all agencies to allow time for more negotiations on the miner healthcare issue.
“We ought to have an extension [of the continuing resolution past Friday] … a two- or three-day extension so we can negotiate,” he said. “This is wrong what’s being done to the miners.”
Their outrage over the mining issue is overshadowing another party grievance over Republicans inclusion of language in the continuing resolution bill to help fast-track Gen. James Mattis’ nomination for defense secretary.
Manchin said he didn’t like Republicans’ decision to include the Mattis language in the funding bill. He said he could “work through” that issue but is putting his foot down on the temporary extension for miners healthcare. Approximately 22,000 retired miners or their widows will lose their healthcare benefits by the end of the year.
Senate Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., earlier this week said he is pushing for healthcare benefits for miners that would continue until the end of April, the same length of the continuing resolution under consideration.
Manchin said Congress has an obligation to provide a longer-term solution to the problem for the miners or their widows.
Because of coal-industry bankruptcies, more than 22,000 coal miner retirees are scheduled to lose their union’s healthcare benefits by the end of this year. McConnell said he wouldn’t let this happen and would “insist” that language helping to bail out the union health program will make it into the continuing resolution scheduled for passage by Friday.
Manchin, along with several key Democrats from coal-producing states, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., say that’s not good enough.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., also took exception to the inclusion of the Mattis language in the continuing resolution, arguing it “sets a terrible precedent” to be changing Senate rules in a funding bill.
But she also took issue with what she regarded as the bigger problem of “workers getting screwed.”
“The worst is what they are doing to miners,” she said. “How dare they elect a president on the notion that he will support coal miners when the first chance they get to screw over the widowers and the pension owners that were coal miners — it’s just outrageous.”
McCaskill said she didn’t know yet if she is willing to shut the government down over the issue, but said Congress “should not go home until we fix this for coal miners.”
“The president-elect needs to step in and say, ‘I meant what I said about coal miners, I’m going to take care of them.’ But until he does, I don’t think [Speaker] Paul Ryan is going to listen,” she said.
Capito said she is trying to press McConnell and other GOP leaders to accept stronger language.
“We’re still pushing,” Capito told reporters. “It’s not over until it’s over…four months is something, but it’s so little it’s…totally inadequate.”
She said Republican leaders are listening “but it’s been a hard slog and it’s still lacking in the response that we’re getting.”
Manchin and Capito wrote a bill earlier this year that would fix the bankrupt miners pension program by taking money from the Abandoned Mine Land Trust Fund until the benefits fund is stabilized.
Back in September, miners rallied outside the Capitol for support of the measure, which passed the Senate Finance Committee but never made it to the floor for a vote.
Manchin, McCaskill and Capito have the support of other Democratic senators from states with contingents of miners impacted, including Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mark Warner of Virginia. Those six senators could join forces to prevent a final vote on the continuing resolution.
Capito said she is trying to press McConnell and other GOP leaders to accept stronger language.
“We’re still pushing,” Capito told reporters. “It’s not over until it’s over…four months is something but it’s so little it’s…totally inadequate.”
