West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin (D) and Shelley Moore Capito (R) announced legislation today to shore up the mine workers' insolvent multi-employer pension fund.
The American Miners Pension Act would direct the Treasury Department to lend the United Mine Workers of America pension plan up to $600 million a year — enough, the bill's supporters said, to prevent a bankruptcy that could beggar the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures the plan. The UMWA fund is expected to run out of money by 2022, union officials said.
"If our pension collapses, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will collapse right along with it," UMWA President Cecil Roberts told reporters in a press conference at the Capitol.
The bill would require the UMWA fund to pay off the loans within 30 years, setting the interest rate at 1 percent. The fund would not be required to make payments on the principal for the first 10 years. The bill also includes a provision allowing the transfer of excess funds from the Abandoned Mine Land program to the pension fund.
The UMWA's retiree health insurance fund has similarly been tottering on the brink of insolvency, but the union and its allies secured in a spending bill earlier this year an extension of health benefits.
"We got half the battle, half the victory on health care," Capito said, but "we can't do this on one side of the aisle or the other. It has to be bipartisan."