Joe Manchin

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, as you can see, there is a lot of passion here and a lot of passion for people who have hard-working men and women in their State also. I am so proud to have the incoming leader of our caucus, Senator Schumer from New York, who has been a stalwart on this. He has fought. He has stayed with us every step of the way, and he will continue to lead this fight until we are successful. At this time, I wish to make sure Senator Schumer gets recognized.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I know there is not a lot of coal mining in Delaware, but we sure do have a lot of friends in Delaware. I yield to my dear friend, Senator Chris Coons.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise and stand here today fighting for the working men and women each one of us--whether Democrat or Republican, whether you belong to a 100-Member Senate or a 435-Member House--use in our commercials. Every one of us goes out and basically tries to attract working men and women to vote for us because we say: We are coming here to fight for you. We are going to stand up for you. No one is going to walk over you, push you aside, or forget about you. Every one of us has done those ads. Our 435 House Members had to go home yesterday because it was time for Christmas. I remind all of my colleagues that we have basically missed 100 working days this year. Do you think we have been overworked? I don't think so, but I guess my House Members did because they had to go home. They never even gave us the courtesy of giving us a 3-day extension. We can work through these problems. We have said that, but that is not even there. I guess they think they want to jam us. We are here fighting for the United Mine Workers pension, people who have given this country everything they had. These are people who said: I will go down there and get the energy you need to win the war and the energy you need to build this country. I have the industrial might--the middle class. We will build it. We are the middle class. That is who they are. That is all they said. We made commitments to them. For the first 50 years after they energized this country and won two world wars, they got nothing. My grandfather was one of them. They got nothing--no pension, no health care. They got nothing. In 1946, they finally got something. We have been fighting ever since then just to keep it, and now all of a sudden it is going to evaporate and nobody will say a word because we have to go home for Christmas. We have to go home for vacation. Well, we have been working, fighting, and really clawing for this. We have it. If it came to the floor, it would pass, and we know that, but we have some friends on the other side--435 over there--who, for some reason, didn't believe it was of urgency. They said, we are going to give you a 4-month extension on the health care benefits that 16,000 miners lose December 31. We will give you 4 months, and I guess we are supposed to be happy with that. Well, I am not. I am sorry, but I am not. We fought for the Miners Protection Act. We went through the regular order and we got an 18-to-8 vote out of the Finance Committee at the Senate, and we thought we would be right here having that vote and showing the people we support them and that hopefully the House would take it up, but that never happened. Where we stand today, right now, is, we are asking what is our pathway forward. Well, we have been working and talking, as you are supposed to. We tried to basically negotiate, we tried to find compromise, and we tried to find a pathway forward. It has been hard for me to see a pathway forward right now. I am going to have to oppose this CR and oppose, not only the cloture but the passage of the CR for many reasons, and I will give you one example that probably galls me more than anything else that we have done here or over in the House. My Republican colleagues didn't even know about it. It is not from this side. It came from that side, and what they did was say, not only are we going to add insult to injury and only give you 4 months, we will make you pay for it with your own money. We will make you pay for it with money that has been set aside through bankruptcy courts to give retirement to miners who worked for companies that declared bankruptcy, went through the bankruptcy court, had money set aside so they would at least have health care for a while. The people we are talking about were supposed to have health care until July. Guess what. Because of what we are doing, they lose 3 months. Now, grant you, we have people--16,000--who have health care until December who get 4 months, if you consider that a victory, but how about the couple thousand who were supposed to have it until July are only going to have it now until April? What do you tell them? I am sorry. We fought like the dickens for you, but you lost 3 months. Where I come from that doesn't fly. I can't explain that. I really can't. I am encouraged, to a certain extent. My friend the majority leader, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, said he was confident the retirees would not lose benefits next year, including more than 3,000 in his home State of Kentucky. I think it is highly unlikely we will take that away, he said. It has been my intention that the miner benefits not expire at the end of April next year. I believe him. And he pledged: I am going to work with my colleagues to prevent that. I am ready to go to work. I am not sure if my colleagues on the other side--435 in the House--are as committed. I appreciate the majority leader making this commitment. I do appreciate that very much. Unfortunately, it is not enough because I don't have the commitment from the other side, and I am going to fight for that. For that reason and many more, I am going to be unable to vote for cloture, and I encourage my colleagues not to vote for cloture on this CR. With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Ohio, Senator Brown.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, at this time, to put things in perspective, because a lot of people don't really know--people say: Why do you even use coal anymore? Why do we even need coal? Let me explain to the 300-plus million people living in America today that if you are alive today, for most of your life, over 50 percent of your energy that has been given to you has been delivered to you because of coal. So to put it in perspective, what 12 hours of the day do you not want electricity? What 12 hours of the day do you not want heat, air conditioning--anything? We need to bring attention to the people who have done the work. That is all we have said. They are forgotten heroes. In West Virginia, we feel like a Vietnam returning veteran. We have done everything our country has asked of us, and now you will not even recognize us. You don't even understand what we have done. Well, that is what we are doing. That is what we are fighting for. At this time I would like to recognize my good friend from Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, who comes from the tremendous State of Pennsylvania, which has provided an awful lot of energy for many years. Senator Casey.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, as you can see, I am extremely proud. I can't tell you how proud I am of my colleagues. This is why we are here. We are standing for the people who work every day to provide a better living for themselves and to provide a better country for all of us to live in. With that, I am happy to be here with my good friend, my colleague, and my dear friend from Virginia, Senator Mark Warner.

Mr. MANCHIN. We have Senator Coons, Senator McCaskill, Senator Schumer, and I am going to say something, and we will be finished.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, let me say to my dear friend from New Jersey, I appreciate his support so much. He has been right with me from day one, basically for the working men and women of this country but, most importantly, for the miners who have given us the country we have had today. I have been doing this for quite some time now. It is nothing new. This is not new to anybody. This has not been sprung on somebody at the last minute, what we are fighting for and what we are trying to do. As of October, we had over 16,000 of our retired miners and a lot of elderly women--widows whose husbands have passed away--who were notified they would be losing their health care benefits December 31 of this year. We have been working for a permanent fix called the Miners Protection Act, and if that bill were brought to the floor today, it would pass. We have all of the Democratic caucus--all 46 of us--and we have at least 15 who have committed to voting for it from our Republican colleagues, but that is not to be. That is not going to happen. We have been working everything we can. We have gone through regular order. That means it has been to the Finance Committee. It has gone through and been debated and vetted, and it came out of there with an 18-to-8 vote--very strong in a bipartisan way. Now what do we do? We are not going to get a vote on the floor. We thought, well, let's attach it. The Cures Act came over, and it is a health care act. It was germane to that bill, and it should fit in perfectly. They said, no, we can't put it in there. The only thing we have left is what we are doing now, a CR. This is something I have never done. I have been here 6 years and have never used this procedure to say: Wait a minute. If we don't stand for the people who have fought, worked, and died for us and basically given us the country we have--we have won two wars with the domestic energy that has been mined right here in America, an awful lot of it in West Virginia, I might add. We have the strongest country in the world. We are a superpower. That would never have happened. We would never have the military might we have today. We would never have the middle class we have. We just wouldn't have the quality of life we have in America if had not been for the domestic energy our miners have given us. What we are asking for and all they are saying is this is a promise that was made in 1946 that President Truman said: Listen, we are going to commit to you that every ton of coal mined from this day forward and the coal companies you work for, we are putting money aside to make sure you have lifetime benefits for health care and for your pension. These are not big, elaborate pension plans. They are very small. They are subsidies, if you will. The health care has been so very important to many people. This has been going on for quite some time, and we have been involved many times. Yes, the Federal Government has been involved to make sure the companies put that money aside so they would have their health care and their pensions. Then, lo and behold, Congress basically passed bankruptcy laws that let people walk away from their obligations through bankruptcy. Now the promises were made and the promises that were kept by Congress were done away with through the bankruptcy laws that were so lenient that people could declare bankruptcy and say: Listen, I am sorry, but we are just not going to fulfill that commitment. That legacy goes away. That is somebody else's problem. To fast forward to where we are today and why we have the problems we have, let me bring you up to speed with what we are dealing with. We have asked for the Miners Protection Act, which was the permanent health care fix and a permanent pension fix. These are for the retirees. We have another group of retirees here who have gone through bankruptcy and there was money set aside, about $47 million. That was supposed to run out in June. We were going to bring all of them together so we took care of everybody. Now, the bill they put in front of us that the House of Representatives has given us is horrendous and it is inhumane. They gave us a bill and said: Take it or leave it on the CR. Nobody wants to close this great institution, this government down-- not a person. You have to stand for something or surely to God, you will stand for nothing. That is where we find ourselves. They gave us a 4-month extension. If your aunt or your mother were getting a notice in October that she would lose it in December--they want us now to say: OK. We are going to be so sympathetic, we will give you 4 more months, through April. That same person is now going to get another notification in January that she is going to lose it in April. On top of that, she will not even be able to meet her deductibles. So there is no insurance. There is nothing. You remember the money I said they set aside, $47 million, for the miners who basically have gone through a bankruptcy and lost their jobs and retired, they were going through June. Those same miners now are going to lose May and June--2 months. They are going to lose 2 months. There is going to be a $2 million surplus that goes back to Treasury. I had one woman call me. She said: Senator Manchin, I don't know, but back home where I come from, they call that thievery. She is absolutely correct. This is why we are so committed, and we are so dug in on this issue. It is a fairness. It is the right thing to do. All we have asked for is to take care of our miners' health care. We will come back and fight another day for pensions, but give us the health care that has been promised and committed time after time again. I have never seen anything this callous in my life, that we weren't willing to fulfill a promise we have made and the Federal Government put its stamp of approval on. For those who are saying it is inconvenient and the procedures I have been using and my other colleagues with me--I have had everybody, and I appreciate them so much. And for them to say: Hey, you have held up a lot of goods bills--yes, a lot of bills that I have worked on for a year or more I have held up, but if we can't pass forward on this and walk out of here basically knowing we did the right thing, what is our purpose for being here? Why do we come? We all talk. I have seen everybody's elections. All of our election advertisements, whether they be Democratic or Republican, are we are all for the middle class. We are all for the working class. We are going to make sure the working men and women really get a fair shake. They have been screwed and left behind so let's do it. OK. We are all for that. All of our advertising, our campaigns say that. We are committed to it. The only thing I am saying is now fulfill it. It is either put up or shut up. That is all. You have already told them, you have asked them to vote for you because of this reason. Now you have a chance to show them that is why you are here. I came here to do exactly what I told you I was going to do--fight for you, make sure you are treated fairly. We have pay-fors. This is not coming out of taxpayers' money. This is AML--abandoned mine lands. The abandoned mine land money comes from every ton of coal. There is a certain percentage of money from that coal that goes into a fund and that is put aside to do reclamation. Now, I have some of my Western States that don't have quite the reclamation we have had. In the Eastern part of the country, in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Southwestern Virginia, there is an awful lot of work to be done, and we do that work. We have done this for quite some time. We are saying: Listen, we are not denying you getting your money, but you shouldn't get first dibs on it and then hinder us from taking care of the responsibility we have to the miners who have been giving you the opportunity to live in this great country. That is really what it comes down to. I have been asking all of my colleagues--this is not a fight that is going to be damaging to anybody. This is the only time-sensitive issue we have before us. There is nothing else we have before us. All of the bills are on hold right now. Not one bill has time sensitivity. We can come back and do it again. We have no problems doing them over and over. We have been here a long time. This is the only one where the miners lose their health care--16,500 lose it December 31. You show me anything else we have in here where someone is going to be that harmed at a time specific when we walk out of here. That is what this is about. To tell me they are going to give us 4 months and they are doing us a favor for 4 months, that is inhumane. How they did it and paid for it is a crime. It is awful. That is why we are standing here fighting, and that is why I am going to continue to fight. I think we have a purpose in life. If you have a purpose in life in public service, then serve the public. Don't come here to serve yourself. That is all people have asked for--do your job. You wonder why we have a low rating from the public, why they think so little of Congress. This is common sense. It is so easy for us to do. It is so easy for us to do. It is so easy for us to be able to say: Fine, we are going to fulfill this, and then we have a lot of other things we want to take care of. That is all we have asked for, and that is all we are asking for now. We can do the right thing between today and tomorrow. We truly can. Someone said the House has left. I am so sorry they were inconvenienced and had to leave so early to go home for Christmas. You go home and tell the people I live with, the people I was raised with, the people who have taken care of me: I am so sorry. We had to go home for Christmas. I am sorry you are losing your health care December 31. I didn't mean for that to happen, but you know I had to get home for Christmas. That doesn't play well where I come from. That is not a commitment, and that is not public service. I am so sorry. I hope I have haven't inconvenienced anybody. I hope I haven't made you feel uncomfortable. I hope I haven't held up a bill that you have been working on because I have held up all my bills. No one was left unscathed in this. All we are saying is, for Pete's sake, do the right thing; stand up for this. Stand up for the people who gave us what we have today. History said if you don't know where you come from, you sure don't know where you are going. If we are not going to stand up for the people who have given us the life we have, I am not sure where we are going. I know one thing. I go home and look them in the eye. I can say I am doing everything I can, and I am going to fight for you. I am willing to take whatever it takes, whatever medicine it takes here, however upset people get with me, however uncomfortable they may be. I am asking: Please, take care of the miners' health care. That is all right now. We will talk about the rest later. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. To this measure? No, sir.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--

Mr. MANCHIN. I just want to clarify. I think there is some confusion. It seems like everybody is in a hustle right now. I think they think we are being selective. I want to make it very clear. I have been very clear to everybody. I have had to object on everything. I have had to object on my own pieces of legislation to stop everything. With that being said, I think I was asked about Senator Wyden's request, and I said, no, I wouldn't at that time, and then I think at that time Senator Tillis objected. For that you were asked did I object, and I said no. With that being said, I would have objected to everything, and I think everybody knew where I stood in this body that I will and have to reluctantly--I don't want to be in this position. I am so committed to fulfilling the promise and commitment we have made. That is all. I am sorry if there has been confusion. I have to, for the position we have taken. I think the good fight that we have here--and, basically, what the House has done to us is not humane to the people we represent. That is all I said. I am sorry for that. So if there is a motion on the table, I object to that too.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will continue to object to any unanimous consent on legislation until the CR includes a permanent long-term solution for our miners' health care, as included in the Miners Protection Act, S. 3470. So this is something that we have been talking about and working on for 2 years. That is all we have asked: Fulfill our promises as those representative of people who have given everything. So I will have to object for these reasons.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would like to explain why we are here and what is really happening, so people have a good grasp of things. First of all, the Miners Protection Act--this protection act basically goes back to a commitment, a promise, and a transaction that we have done in Congress in 1946, under President Harry Truman. It is the Krug act. Basically, it was said that from that day forward, we are basically taking certain amounts of money from all the coal that is mined. This is not public funds. We are not asking for public funds. If we had done what we were supposed to do, we would have taken that money and put that money in the funds for the miners' protection of their health and their pension. They had nothing before that. They are the ones who basically gave us the energy that we had to win two world wars and become the super power of the West. All they asked for was that. It wasn't guaranteed by taxpayers going to pay it. It was going to come from the coal that was mined. Now this same Congress comes back 20, 30 years later, and we changed the bankruptcy laws to allow companies now to declare bankruptcy and to shed their legacy costs. They don't have to pay it no more. So we are caught. Every promise we made now is this: Oh, I am sorry; we can't pay you. So we did step in. We stepped in a couple of times--in 1993, in 2006. Congress has basically a history with this piece of legislation. So we are working now to shore it up. AML means abandoned mine lands. That is money that goes from every kind of coal into a reclamation fund that takes care of any reclamation that is needed from the mining process. As you are putting the mines back or putting the environment back and taking the environment and putting the land back, that money would be used for that. If there was not much reclamation or if that money accumulated, then we have a surplus. We have only asked for the surplus. So we were all on the same page, and we have been negotiating back and forth. This is 2 years ago and up until present. We have been negotiating back and forth, up to 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago we were told, and I have had good, honest, upfront negotiations with the majority leader. He said: I just don't think the pension is going to fly this year. I said: I understand it. I am still going to work my tail off for this thing. I had to tell all the widows and all the people whom we represent-- 16,300 who were notified in October. They have to give a 90-day notification that you are going to lose your health care benefits. They gave that notification in October for December 31. That happened. I had to tell them now that we are not going to get the pension this year. We are doing everything we can, but I am almost positive we are going to get the health care because I was told we were going to get the health care. Not until 2 days ago did I have any inkling that now, all of a sudden--I am not blaming my colleagues here--the House said: Oh, I am sorry. We are only going to do an extension for the CR--the same extension for the health care. I know that my colleagues would agree with this. Let's say it was your aunt or your grandmother or a retired person basically being paid those benefits. They were told in October. Now we are supposed to accept this CR coming over with this language that says: Ok, now let's tell Mrs. Smith again. We are basically going to say: OK, we gave you a 4-month extension, but we are going to notify you again in January that you are going to lose it again in April. They don't even have time to work with the deductibles to get any insurance--nothing. Let me tell you how they were going to pay for it. This is what came from the House--not my colleagues here but from the House. The House says: OK, we are going to take $47 million from the VEVA transfers. VEVA was money that was set aside for other bankruptcies. These were bankruptcies that were basically going to give people who were retired under those bankruptcies at least health care coverage until June. Those same people are going to lose theirs because it is going to take their money and they are going to lose theirs also. It is almost incomprehensible that they would give us something like this and think it is something we could do. We got a bipartisan agreement here on this side, and we can't get just a consideration from our colleagues over in the House. So I just can't explain it. I can't go home and explain this. We are walking out of here, trying to get out this weekend because everybody wants to go home. That is wonderful. The only thing we have this time certain is December 31. They know they are going to lose everything--their health care benefits. It is in doubt that they will have their pensions taken care of, and we won't stay here because it is too much of an inconvenience. That is why we are prepared. We are going to stay. If they want to stay through Christmas, fine--through the New Year, fine. I think that they think: I know everybody wants to go home; so I am sure everybody will fold their hands and leave. I want to thank all of you and all of my colleagues for jumping up here because you all have been helping us. They just have to get the message that we are sincere about helping these people. Everybody is standing for the working person. Every campaign ad I saw this year said: We are all for the working man and the working woman. Well, you got a chance to prove it right now. You got a chance to show that I am for you, that I respect what you did, what your husband did, what your family has done for the country, and I am trying to help you. What we are asking for is to give us a permanent long-term solution for the miners, included in the Miners Protection Act that we have been working on for so long, S. 3470. Reluctantly, therefore, for these reasons, I have to object.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, first, I say to my good friend from North Carolina, Mr. Tillis, I have been in the Senate for 6 years, so I have never used this procedure--never believed it, never thought I would have to, never thought anything would be so direly needed that I would even have to stand here and object to all the good things we both have worked on. I have so many good things on my side that I am not moving right now, and you have so many great things on your side that I would love to help you with. But, sir, if you were in my position--let me go a little bit further because I don't think maybe I made it. If you want to add insult to injury to what has happened to our retired miners and all the people dependent on their health care benefits, the $47 million that I told you they transferred--that is what they are going the pay for from the House, the VEBA--basically takes it from other bankrupt funds that were set aside. They are going to do that, and when all is said and done-- and it has even been scored that Medicaid and Medicare would save so much because now they are paying for it out of the miners health care fund, and they are not going to have to. But on top of that, from the $47 million they took, they are going to make $2 million profit returned back to the Treasury. They are going to take $2 million from money set aside to pay--that the bankruptcy courts put aside to pay miners because they will lose their health care by June. Now they are going to lose it by April, by this provision that has been passed by the House. And on top of that, they will have $2 million in surplus. I had a lady call me today. She said: You know, Senator Manchin, where I come from, they call that theft. They call that theft. And why would you all let them do that? If they don't do anything, some of our miners are, till June--16,000 of us lose. We don't want to punish them, but now you are punishing them. You are punishing them an extra 3 months. Why would you all do that? I am not sure they really realize it on the other side. Like I said, I am not at our colleagues here, my friends and Republican colleagues I have here, but why would the House send that to you, and why would you all accept it? That is all we are asking for. We can all gather forces here and send a large message to them that we are not going to do this until they come to their senses and take care of the miners' health care benefits. You know what. We can come back. We can let all of this--all of our UCs that have been worked on and that I think are so needed can go right through, we can all go home, and hopefully our miners know they have health care, we know we have done a lot of good for a lot of people, and hopefully everyone will have a better Christmas. So all I am asking for--until the CR includes that permanent, long term, I am going to have to object.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would like to explain to my good friend, the Senator from North Carolina, that I have been deferring to you the pleasure of objecting, and that is the reason I didn't object to the Senator from Oregon. As you said, we can stay here. I think we all have a lot of appreciation for the situation. With that being said, we have come to an impasse that if we cannot get the House, with the help of our Senate colleagues on both sides, to agree to a permanent, long-term fix and a solution for the miners' health care--and I would say to the Senator, we took off the pension; you heard me say that. We took the pensions off of that. We thought that might provide us a way to move forward. We thought we had a way to move forward. With that being said, we stand here today objecting to things that we would all like to move forward on. It pains all of us to be in this position. Hopefully, you all can help us, talking to the House and basically asking them to come to their senses and, hopefully, take care of this. So for that reason, until we have a long-term solution for our miners' health care as included in the Miners Protection Act, S. 3470, I object.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my dear friend from Pennsylvania, my neighbor State, for his commitment to the hard-working people who made this country what it is today. There are a lot of people who don't know the history of how we are the superpower of the world, how we won two world wars, how we energized the whole industrial age, and how we built the middle class. It came because of the domestic energy that we basically extracted right here in America and it was done by mine workers. My grandfather came to this country as a young child in the early 1900s, and his family came here to find a better life. On both sides--I had one set of grandparents who came from Czechoslovakia and the other set came from Italy, and both sides ended up in the coal mines, as well as all of my uncles and cousins. We had these little coal camps all over the area where I grew up in Farmington, WV. I was so proud of my heritage. I will never forget my Boy Scout leader was Pat Keener. He was a coal miner. When the coal mines automated in 1959, he had to go and find a job in Ohio in the auto industry. My Little League coach was a coal miner--everybody I knew. The hunting and fishing clubs were all coal miners who took all of us and showed us how to do things and enjoy the outdoors. It is just an unbelievable network of people, and most all of them were military. Most all of them were veterans. They continued to serve their country when they left the mines and went to the military and came back to the mines. So I rise with a heavy heart because I thought we had this fixed. I thought this was something we had done--and Senator Casey laid it out so well. We have done everything we can. This day has been coming for quite some time. I warned everybody 2 years ago that this finite time would come December 31 of this year. We started working in earnest quite a while ago. We were told to go through the regular order, as Senator Casey said, to do the things we were supposed to do. It got its full purview, if you will, and it passed bipartisanly. Everyone is sympathetic. Everyone knows the hard work that is done and how dangerous it is. My uncle on my mom's side got killed in the 1968 mine explosion in Farmington. I lost a lot of kids I went to school with, classmates, so it has been very near and dear to me. As Governor of West Virginia, the Sago Mine disaster, I lost 12 miners there. We had the Logan Mine disaster, and I lost two people there, and then we had the UBB, and we lost 29 people. So I have been through it. I know how dangerous and tough this business is, but I know the country depends on them. We can't run without them. I want to make sure everyone understands that this was never intended for the government or the taxpayers to pay. It never was. It wasn't set up that way. In 1946, John L. Lewis basically said we are going to go on strike. We are pulling everybody out. This was after World War II. The economy had been ramped up because it was 100 percent employment. We were producing and consuming because of the war effort. When that happened, the economy started heading down. He said: Oh, no. We have to keep this economy going. We can't let this tail off. They said: Listen, from the beginning of the 20th century until 1946--46 years--these miners have done back-breaking work. We have heard the old adage ``I owe my soul to the company store.'' My grandfather told me that when he worked in the mines in the early 1920s, he had four children and was expecting his fifth child, and he said at the end of the day, he had no money. All the script was at the company store. He had to borrow everything there, and at the end of the month, he owed them for working, trying to make it. He had no health care. There was a doctor who helped them a little bit. They had no pension or retirement. They worked until they died, and that was the way it was. In 1946, they said: Enough is enough. You shouldn't work this hard and so many people benefit. You helped build a country and you get nothing. So they said from that day forward--and that was the Krug amendment that was signed--and by the blessings of the U.S. President, Harry S. Truman. Then they said, from that day forward: All the coal that we mine, a percentage of that coal or the money on that percentage of coal, would go into a black lung fund and then it would go into the AML fund and then it would go into basically the miners health care and retirement--a portion of that. So it wasn't coming from taxpayers; it was coming from the work they were producing. That is where this came from. So everything is going fine. Then, basically, Congress passed bankruptcy laws that allowed companies to go and declare bankruptcy and basically divest themselves of all of their responsibilities to the people who worked for them. This was done to them. We had the 74 plant and the 92 plant. So we dealt with something that was not their making. These people negotiated contracts in good faith by bargaining, and they would give away salary or money that could have been in their pocket because they knew they were going to get guaranteed health care, and now here we stand basically saying: I am sorry. That is not going to happen. You are going to lose your pension and health care. We have over 16,000 who will lose their health care benefits by the end of this year, less than 4 weeks away--16,000. Senator Casey read some letters, and I am going to read some letters as well. What we are doing here is we are holding up--and I know it affects everybody's hard work. This is something that is not easy for me. I have never done this. I have been here 6 years. I have never used this procedure, but I have never felt so committed and so beholden to people who have given so much. We are talking 60-, 70-, and 80-year-old women. Most of the husbands have died; they are still depending on this. The little clinics we have in the coal communities around West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania, those coal communities and coal camps and basically those little clinics will not survive. This has a ripple effect. Now, I understand they are going to give us a 4-month extension--4 months. Let me tell my colleagues what these people are going through. They were told the 1st of October they will lose their benefits of health care; 16,000 were sent letters telling them they will lose them by the end of this year. Now, what we are about to do--which I believe is totally inhumane--we are about to now send them another letter, if passed the way it is going to be presented to us in the CR, that says: I am sorry, Mrs. Smith. I know we told you that you are going to lose your health care on December 1, but now we are going to tell you that in January we will send you another letter and tell you, you are going to lose it in April. Now, you tell me if there is anything fair about that. You tell me how you face people who have given everything, and now we are just going to extend it for another 4 months with no certainty that anything will continue from there. We are asking for a permanent fix. We have a pay-for for that permanent fix. It is the excess we have, surplus in the AML money, but everybody has other plans for that. Well, guess what. The people who need it have plans also, to try to keep themselves alive. That is the plan they have, and that is what they are asking for. I haven't ever used this tactic before, but I feel so compelled that I said we are going to do whatever we can to keep this promise. We have asked for the health care--this had a health care and pension provision. It has only the health care provision right now because we understand that we worked and we negotiated and we said this is something we felt we needed now because they had a finite time--at the end of this month. We will work on the pensions next year, too, to make sure they are going to be preserved. That being said, I have gotten letters, the same as everybody else in coal country where we come from. Here is one: Dear Senator Manchin, without action I, along with thousands of other coal miners and widows of coal miners, will lose our health care on December 31. My husband died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. He also had black lung. He loved his job even though it was so dangerous. He worked to ensure that we had good health benefits not just for me but for him and our family. I am asking Congress to please do the right thing and don't let us lose our health care benefits. I have another letter. This is from Carol Turek. Carol writes: My husband worked in the mines with blockages in his brain until he had enough time. He worked even though he was that ill so that I would have insurance if something happened to him, knowing that he was very ill. He retired in 2009 and he passed away in 2011. He was a good worker. He stayed over and worked days off when needed and this is how they thank him in return. How is an older person supposed to live when they take away your retirement, take away your insurance, and never give you raises in Social Security? Everything raises and medical is outrageous. I guess when you are old, they expect you to crawl into a corner and die. Well, I pray every day that God gives me another day, and I am praying that they pass this health care provision so that others and myself can live just a little bit longer. I have another one. She says: Dear Senator Manchin and all of you who are trying to help us. My husband Charles passed away on October 12 from cancer. Patriot Coal filed bankruptcy before Charles passed away. He told me that if they took his medical coverage, that he would not go to the doctor because he didn't want to leave me in debt if he didn't get medical coverage, so he didn't want to go to the doctor. My income was cut almost 75 percent when Charles passed away. Charles was promised these benefits for us both. He worked all of those years in coal dust to help supply this country with the energy that it needed. I pray that our government will pass this bill to help the thousands that will be affected by not having health care. Some people will choose to buy medicine instead of food. This is so sad and coal miners worked in the mines and risked their lives for so long. Some people that have never worked can get help under the new health care law, so why not help the ones who have worked and paid for it? Why can't they get what they are supposed to get? I am proud to be an American and daughter, sister, wife, and mother of coal miners. I have one here that explains it very well. She says: Dear Senator. I have dedicated my life to a career in nursing in Boone County, WV. My husband developed kidney disease and heart disease at an early age. He did not smoke, drink, nor do drugs. Doing his work he developed an autoimmune. He worked very sick for 30 years underground in the coal industry as an electrician in the mines and maintenance worker. He was an educated man but he loved working with his hands. After coming out of the U.S. Air Force when he worked in the World Communication Agency as a cryptographic specialist in the White House, he chose to go into the mines as a career because of the reliable future, retirement, and health benefits that it assured for his family. Rick worked hard every day and during the last 15 years that he worked he would sometimes travel over 45 minutes away and take chemotherapy treatments to treat his kidney disease while he was still working. He had heart disease as a result of those treatments. So many heart studies, the stent, and the bypass surgery followed along with the continued renal disease. All of those years he worked in the mines to provide electricity to so many who worked other jobs, were comfortable in their homes, sitting at their desks, not risking life or limb for the luxuries afforded them by the coal miners who had been promised health and retirement benefits if they took less pay, did not strike for same, and continued providing the valuable coal resources this country needed. Continuing: After educating me to beyond my Master's level; putting a girl through medical school, and another daughter to Master's level in teacher education--we depleted many of our financial resources to do this, knowing we had ``secure retirement and health'' planned for through his union. During the last 1\1/2\ years of his life, after retirement, Rick died of leukemia that developed from many years of chemical treatments for his autoimmune kidney disease. Meanwhile, I worked 26 years as a school nurse plus additional years as a registered nurse, planning to utilize my husband's percentage of retirement and health benefits to secure my own retirement. Continuing: When the courts of this land allowed bankrupting companies to fold on their commitments to our miners, that has become a frightening and impossible situation for myself, a widow, and many more in my same situation. Devastation is the only word that can be used to describe the trickle down effect it will have on so many other businesses and health agencies, if this congressional action does not carry through to secure our union miners, retirees, and widows. You are not only destroying the 12,000 plus miners and widows involved, you are destroying huge infrastructures and businesses that depend upon the income and health benefits where these individuals are served. Please note, only the ``union'' miners contributed to these funds, not the nonunion miners who chose much higher wages opposed to the union wages and structure. Please consider this so we can go into Christmas knowing we have the security of the fund being stabilized. Some will have no way out; some individuals will literally not survive without the needed health care and pensions they worked and sacrificed their health to obtain. Thank you, Sue Peros, Wife of Bert Ricky Peros, South Charleston, WV. We have many more. The thing I want to emphasize is that these are real people. This is not just something we are fabricating. These are people who work every day. These are people still living, still contributing, still taking care of their families, still depending on health care. The ripple effect is unbelievable. To sit here and say we are going to pass a CR because we want to go home for Christmas or to say we have the comfort of being home and we have 16,000 miners, retired--we have their widows and families depending on health care, and they have been told they are going to lose it December 31, but we are in a hurry to leave. We just can't wait to leave. We have got to get out of here. Well, I am sorry, that is not the way we do it back home. That is not how we treat our friends and neighbors and especially not how we treat our miners. I am asking all of you to work with us to make sure we get a permanent fix. That is all I am asking for. We have a way to do this with the surplus AML funds to pay for that, money that was made for mining the coal to be used for this. That is what we are asking for. That is what we promised them. That is what we owe them. I thank all of my colleagues, each and every one, for being so considerate. We have bipartisan support. I will say this: If this were a standalone bill on this floor, it would pass. This bill on this floor would pass, with Democrats and Republicans working together. It would also pass in the House. But that is not the case. We can't get a standalone bill. We have what we have. We are asking for the compassion of our leaders on both sides of the aisle here to give us a clean, long-term fix for health care for the retired miners as promised. Mr. President, I yield the floor to my dear friend from Ohio.

Mr. MANCHIN. Let's let you do yours now. Go ahead. The Senator from Connecticut can go ahead.

Mr. MANCHIN. Yes.

Mr. MANCHIN. Sir, that is so kind of you. If we could do that, since the Senator is not here, then we can be very brief on ours, if you don't mind.

Mr. MANCHIN. We are close. It is West Virginia. I yield the floor to my dear friend and colleague, the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise to explain what is happening for all of my colleagues and my friends on both sides of the aisle. I have been here for 6 years as a Senator. I have always fought to make the body work, and for the people of West Virginia and for our country. I have never believed partisan gridlock is a way to accomplish our policy goals, so I haven't come to this decision easily. I have never used the procedure that I am using today, and I will use, to basically stop all UCs, a lot of good pieces of legislation, a lot of good friends who have worked diligently on this. I want to be able to work with them. My reason for doing this is that over 2 years ago we promised the retired coal miners of America--we promised them--mostly their families, and there are a lot of widows now; we promised them they would have their health care benefits that were guaranteed to them and their pensions. We have been working toward that. We knew this day would come. As of December 31, the end of this month--less than 4 weeks away--there are going to be 16,500 retired families, retired miners who are losing their health care benefits. There will be another 4,000 the first of next year. So I am using this procedure, which I do reluctantly and I never thought I would have to, because we are fighting for those people whom we promised, fighting for those we believe in, to thank them for the power they have provided to this Nation. Now we are turning our backs on them. We have pay-fors for this. We have a way to move forward. These are the health care benefits for our retired miners. It is something they have worked for, they have earned, they deserve, and we are the country we are because of the hard work they have done. So I wanted my colleagues to know why this procedure is going to be a little bit more laborious than they would have liked, why we might not be leaving here when they would have liked to go home. If we don't stand for the people who have made our country as great as it is, we stand for nothing. So with that, I hope my colleagues understand where I am coming from and why I hope they will be with me on this for the sake of all of these families and all of these widows and all of these miners who have given to much so our country. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, we have come to a crisis point in our country, and I speak about this on a weekly basis. It is drug overdose, legal prescription drug overdose. When I talk about legal prescription drug overdose, these are well-noted, good pharmaceutical companies that make a lot of products that save people's lives and help them immensely. It is done with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration, and then it is administered and basically recommended by the most trusted person next to your most trusted family members-- your doctor. Then we look around and we have a product on the market that basically is killing Americans every day. In West Virginia, drug overdose deaths have soared by more than 700 percent since 1999. We lost 600 West Virginians to opiates last year alone--more than any other form that has terminated people's lives in that State. Of the 628 drug overdose deaths in the State in 2014, most were linked to prescription drugs; 199 were OxyContin related, while 133 were attributed to hydrocodone. West Virginia had the highest rate of prescription drug overdose deaths by any State last year--31 per every 100,000 citizens. The next closest State was New Mexico, with 25 deaths per 100,000. In West Virginia, providers wrote 138 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people. I want to repeat that. The providers, our doctors, wrote 138 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people. That doesn't even sound feasible. It doesn't even sound right. It is the highest rate in the country. Between 2007 and 2012, drug wholesalers shipped more than 200 million pain pills to West Virginia. My State has a population of a little less than 1,850,000. So we have about 1,800,000 people and prescription drug wholesalers shipped more than 200 million pain pills to my State. Think about that--200 million pain pills and we have fewer than 2 million people. Unbelievable. That is 40 million per year. And this number doesn't include shipments from the two largest drug wholesalers, so it is even higher than that. Every day in our country, 51 Americans die from opioid abuse. People are dying as we speak. Here are the national drug abuse facts: Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury and deaths in 2013. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle crashes. There were 41,982 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2013. Of those, 22,767--or almost 52 percent--were related to prescription drugs. Drug misuse and abuse caused about 2.5 million emergency department visits in 2011. Of those, more than 1.4 million were related to prescription drugs. Among those emergency visits, 420,000 were related to opiate analgesics. Nearly 2 million Americans ages 12 or older either abused or were dependent on opiates in 2013, and on top of that, they are recommending giving hydrocodone to children as young as 12 years of age. Of the 2.8 million people who used an illicit drug for the first time in 2013, 20 percent began with the nonmedical use of prescription drugs, including pain relievers, tranquilizers, and stimulants. The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world population. With over 7 billion people who live in the world, we have about 320, 330 million people, so that is a little less than 5 percent. Yet we consume 80 percent of the opiates. This Nation, which is less than 5 percent of the world's population, consumes over 80 percent of all the opiates that are produced and consumed in the world--how did we become so addicted?--and 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone, which is Vicodin. Opiate abuse has jumped 287 percent in 11 years. We are not very pain-tolerant anymore. In 2012, health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers--enough for every American to have a bottle of pills. Misuse and abuse of prescription drugs cost the country an estimated $53.5 billion per year in lost productivity, medical costs, and criminal justice costs. Ask any law enforcement--town, county, or State police--and they will tell you that 80 to 90 percent of all the calls they go on are related to some kind of drug use or abuse. Since 1999, we have lost almost 200,000 Americans. If that is not an epidemic, I don't know what is. And why we are not up in arms-- everybody in this country--fighting this epidemic is beyond me. I have always said this is a silent killer. It doesn't matter whether you are Democratic or Republican. This is not a partisan killer. Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, whatever your religious beliefs, whatever your race is, this one has no home. This goes after everybody. But it is a silent killer because we keep our mouths closed because we don't want to admit to anybody outside of our family that we have a problem. My son has a problem. My daughter has a problem. My niece or my nephew, my mom or my dad, my uncle or my aunt has a problem. We think we will keep that in. We won't talk about it. Well, we don't talk about it, and it continues to grow and grow. We have a lot of bills in the hopper right now. The LifeBOAT Act. If I hear 1 time a day, I hear 10 times a day: There is no place to get treatment. I want my child to get treatment. I want my parents to get treatment. There is no place to send them. I have said we need to do something about that. We need to get a permanent funding stream. So I have introduced a bill that says that one penny for every milligram of opioids that is produced in the United States of America will go to a treatment plan. That means every part of the country that has been affected will be able to get treatment. They will have a funding mechanism. Some people say: Well, that is a tax. We don't want to put a tax on it. Well, I am sorry, we do it on cigarettes and we do it on alcohol. We know this is killing people all over the country. No State is immune. Yet we are afraid to move forward. I am hoping we can come together as a body and find a pathway forward so that we can treat addiction as the illness that it is and try to get people back into productive lives and, most importantly, save their lives. This would be one way to do it and do it in a way that we can all look at ourselves and look at what we have done for our constituents and say: We helped you. The Promoting Responsible Opioid Prescription Act. This bill would decouple hospital and physician payments. Right now, if an addict comes in and they don't get what they want, they will report you for bad service. They will report a doctor and they will report a hospital or a clinic, and that basically determines the type of reimbursement they get from Medicaid or Medicare. That is ridiculous. If addicts don't get what they want, they are going to be mad at everybody. So we need to change that. The Changing the Culture of the FDA Act. The FDA should not be putting products on the market that we know are going to alter your life or alter the community or destroy your life. They are there to protect us. If they give a stamp of approval, it should be done because it is a product that we know will not deteriorate or destroy our lives. The FDA Accountability for Public Safety Act will require the FDA to seek advice. I will give a perfect example. They continue to put opioids on the market every day. There are people who are applying to put more products on the market. We don't need any more products. We have enough painkillers, and we are consuming 80 percent of the world production now. How many more do we need? They come out with tougher and stronger products. I can't even understand why they do it, but they say it is needed for different purposes. And then what happens on top of that is that it is against the advice of their own advisory committee. The experts in their field are saying: Don't put this product on the market, but they do it anyway. We are saying: Stop that practice. And they will not be able to do that anymore if we pass this piece of legislation. My good friend from Louisiana, who is a doctor, understands Jessie's Law. Jessie's Law basically would say this: If you have a member of your family--a child, and you are the guardian or the parent and you go to the hospital, both the child who is trying to recover from an addiction and the parents sign that this child has an addiction and this child is in recovery right now, so be very careful what you administer. Red flag that. Make sure--the same as if they were allergic to penicillin--that everyone who handles their chart knows. A young girl named Jessie Grubb in my State of West Virginia died because the discharging physician was not made aware of her condition and prescribed 50 oxycodone. She used 10 of them, and she was dead at 1 o'clock in the morning, the same day she got discharged. This can be prevented. This piece of legislation should have been passed, and I am hoping we can come to grips with that. I am going to read one letter, if the Senator from Louisiana will indulge me, my good friend and colleague from Louisiana. I am going to read the obituary of Emmett Scannell. This obituary was written by Emmett Scannell's father. No father should ever have to write his own child's obituary. I have spoken with Mr. Scannell. He has given me permission to share his son's story as part of his ongoing efforts to break down the stigma surrounding addiction. The first thing you break down is the silence. Parents are willing to speak out now. They want help. They want us to recognize that they need help, and we need laws to help protect them. On April 20, 2016, our 20 year old son, Emmett J. Scannell, lost his battle to Substance Use Disorder and died due to a heroin overdose. Emmett had been in recovery and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous for 2 years when he went off to college in late August 2014. Within 6 weeks, heroin came into his and our lives, stole him from us, and Substance Use Disorder killed him in only 18 months. Adored brother of Zachary Scannell and Alice D'Arpino of Mansfield. Beloved son of Aimee Manzoni-D'Arpino (and her husband John A. Manzoni-D'Arpino) of Mansfield and William E. Scannell (and his life partner, Brenda Rose) of Bridgewater; Nephew of Paula Mountain and Brian Mountain of Raynham and Brian Scannell of Raynham; grandson of Peter and Patricia Campos Manzoni of Easton and Paul Scannell and Nora Scannell, both of Raynham; loving cousin of Josie Mountain, Scott Mountain, and Carley Scannell, all of Raynham. Emmett was a National Honor Society student who graduated from Bridgewater Raynham Regional High School in May 2014. Unfortunately he is not the first member of his class to die from Substance Use Disorder. Emmett was a sophomore at Worcester State University, where he was studying computer science on a full academic scholarship. But most recently he had, and died from, Substance Use Disorder. Emmett was a caring, funny, smart young man with the potential for greatness. He loved his brother and sister, biking and snowmobiling and had a smile and charm that could light up a room, but it won't ever again because he had and died from Substance Use Disorder. You see, Substance Use Disorder is not something to be ashamed of or hidden. It is a DISEASE that has to be brought out into the light and fought by everyone. It continues to cut down our loved ones every day. Please do whatever you can to fight it so that you never have to feel what every one of us who has lost a loved one is feeling right now. We all thank you for your condolences and prayers and ask that you continue to pray for Emmett's soul and our family. . . . Please come to the church where he and his Dad attended their 12-Step Recovery Program together and enjoyed the best years of their lives together. . . . Our family cannot begin to express how much the outpouring of love and support we have received means to us. Knowing our son was loved by so many simply means the world to us! No parent should ever have to write their child's obituary, especially when it was preventable. We have to come to grips with this as a society. We are losing a generation. We are losing a generation that could be helping us economically, that could be helping us find new cures for diseases, that could be helping us in maintaining the superpower of the world and the world order. I look at this, and every day people are pleading for help. They need help. I ask all of you to pray for Emmett and his family, but also, if you have a problem in your family, speak out about it. Let's get the help that is needed. We have professionals who want to help. As a body, let's do the right thing and find a funding source so that we can put the clinics and the treatment centers around the country that are needed. In the State of West Virginia, my colleague Senator Capito knows very well that we have a challenge and we have a problem and we have a killer, and we are going to stop it, rid it, and wipe it out. I yield the floor.

Mr. MANCHIN

Mr. MANCHIN. I thank my friend from Ohio, Senator Portman. Let me just say in wrapping up that there has been concern and there is talk about--you know, we are concerned about the United Mine Workers, which are all union miners, and nonunion miners. I am concerned about all miners, but the agreement, if you think back to 1946, was about anybody and everybody who worked in the mines and belonged to the United Mine Workers of America. That is the agreement that was made to stop a strike from happening, to basically get people back to work and keep the country moving forward. We ratified that again. We ratified it in 1974, 1990, 1992, 1993, and 2006. It has the handstamp of basically the President of the United States. I am saying that if we can't keep that commitment, if we will not fulfill that promise--and people think everybody is basically saying: Well, we are going to subsidize this. It is a Federal Government guarantee. It was a guarantee that the coal that was mined--that the mine operators would pay into the pension plan. Then, through bankruptcy court, that evaporated. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 1 additional minute to finish.

Mr. MANCHIN. I ask unanimous consent that I have 1 additional minute to wrap up.