Congress includes one-year reinstatement of higher black lung tax in spending package

After months of advocacy from coal miners and their widows, Congress has included a one-year extension of a tax to fund the beleaguered Black Lung Disability Trust Fund in its fiscal year 2020 government spending bill.

Advocates for black lung victims have warned that the fund faces dire financial risks after the tax — a per-ton fee on that coal companies pay on the coal they mine — was slashed by more than half at the beginning of 2019.

Congress’ new spending package, which cleared both chambers Thursday and now heads to the desk of President Donald Trump, includes a provision to reinstate the tax to its previous level until the end of 2020, a welcome relief for those concerned about the fund’s financial viability, but not the long-term fix some had hoped for.

“We’re really thrilled that it was included in this spending bill, but were also very conscious of the fact that it’s short term, and very conscious of the fact that a one-year reinstatement is not enough,” said Rebecca Shelton, the coordinator of policy and organizing for the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, which has advocated on behalf of black lung victims. “We have to keep pressing for a longer extension period.”

The trust fund provides monthly cash payments of between $650 and $1,300 for its beneficiaries, along with medical benefits to pay for their black lung-related treatments, according to a May 2018 report to Congress from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

As of fiscal year 2017, the fund gave benefits to about 25,700 miners and their dependents, according to the GAO report.

When the tax cut went into effect at the beginning of this year, it threw the fund into financial uncertainty.

The GAO report cautioned lawmakers that the fund would fall even deeper into debt — it already owes about $4.3 billion to the U.S. Treasury — and some experts warned that the fund would become insolvent if Congress did not find a funding solution.

Jimmy Moore, president of the Letcher County Black Lung Association, said the reinstatement of the tax will give black lung advocates some time to find a longer-term solution, but said he and other miners’ advocates would continue to campaign for a more secure funding system.

“We just got to keep fighting is all I know,” Moore said.

Black lung has surged across Central Appalachia in recent years with a frequency among miners not seen in more than two decades, even as coal production has slowed.

According to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study published last year, black lung has contributed to the deaths of more than 76,000 miners since 1968, and while just 5 percent of miners had black lung in the late 1990s, that rate jumped to more than 20 percent in 2017.

Former Eastern Kentucky coal miners and their wives and widows campaigned for the reinstatement during a trip to Washington D.C. earlier this year, where they met briefly with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The disease is deadly and incurable. Multiple studies have confirmed the spike in black lung in recent years, and suggested that miners as young as their mid-30s are becoming more susceptible to the disease.

According to research presented at the American Thoracic Society’s annual meeting this year, new mining methods and the density of silica-laden rock are likely contributing to the spike in prevalence.

Many coal seams in Eastern Kentucky have already been mined, and those that remain are thin, forcing miners to cut through layers of rock that contain silica. That silica dust has become the leading cause of black lung in Central Appalachia, according to the research.

Along with a reinstatement of the black lung tax, some experts, including those at the Black Lung Center of Excellence at the University of Illinois at Chicago, have said that regulators should create and enforce a separate silica standard to curb the disease’s recent surge.

The extension of the tax comes just after news that McConnell helped secure legislation to help stabilize the United Mine Workers of America pension fund, which also helps provide health benefits for retired miners.

That bill, the Bipartisan American Miners Act of 2019, was included in the spending package, and helped shore up a pension fund that was thrown into its own financial emergency after multiple coal company bankruptcies this year, including Murray Energy.

While many miners’ advocates supported McConnell’s pension bill, they also expressed disappointment that the senator did not include a provision to fund the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund within that legislation. News that the black lung fund will receive at least short term relief, albeit not from McConnell’s pension bill, may increase his political clout within Kentucky’s coalfields.

“I was proud to mobilize the federal government into action to safeguard coal miners’ pension and health care benefits from a looming threat,” McConnell said in a statement earlier this week regarding the Bipartisan Miners Act. “At my request [the] legislation has been included in the government spending bill.”

Emma Dumain contributed to this story.

This story was originally published December 20, 2019 at 10:02 AM.