When President Donald Trump signed the $1.4 trillion budget bill last week, some of the cheers you heard came from retired area miners who knew that a bipartisan congressional deal that had been brokered will help prop up their ailing retirement fund. Virtually the entire Pennsylvania congressional delegation, including Sen. Bob Casey of Scranton, who was one of the leaders of the effort, joined with legislators from other mining states to help break the four-year-long deadlock.

Trump said he was happy to add his name to the legislation, which attached the pension bill to the massive spending bill whose passage prevented a government shutdown.

The support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, eliminated a key roadblock that paved the way toward passage. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who joined Casey as a lead proponent of the legislation, personally lobbied Trump to get on board.

Although this legislation, known as the Bipartisan American Miners Act, might have seemed like a no-brainer, it was anything but, despite lobbying by the United Mine Workers of America union whose members have been holding support rallies for years.

The bill transfers excess funds from abandoned mine reclamation efforts to boost the 1974 retirement plan, which was headed for insolvency within two years if this rescue did not come about.

How did the fund get into these dire straits? Well, there are several reasons. For one, the 2008 Great Recession greatly affected retirement savings with the stock market swoon that year. Another has been the coal industry’s long decline, which has affected the plan’s ability to pay for benefits for an increasing number of retirees. The large number of bankruptcies by coal companies has further complicated the problem.

When these companies went out of business, their pension liabilities could not be met. According to labor union statistics, only 10,000 active workers are paying into the retirement fund from which about 12 times that many miners are drawing pensions. Of those 120,000, about 13,000 of them are here in Pennsylvania, including those who worked the mines in the Panther Valley, Schuylkill County and nearby areas.

The bill faced stiff opposition by Republican legislative leaders from non-coal mining states who argued that the miners’ fund is just one of many pension funds that need help. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, even went so far as to call it a “bailout.”

Cecil Roberts, president of the mine workers’ union, reminded legislators that the federal government promised to guarantee coal miner pensions in a deal between the union and President Harry Truman in 1947 as one of the conditions to end a long and contentious nationwide strike.

Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania promising to bring back the coal industry, but mining companies and their employees have continued to suffer steep declines.

The natural gas boom in Pennsylvania has presented major competition for the coal industry, which experienced reduced demand as utility companies opt to buy less expensive and more environmentally friendly natural gas for its power plants.

Spokesmen for Casey and Manchin said they have been lobbying Trump to support the legislation since the president took office in 2017. In a letter, Manchin wrote: “If we can’t fulfill this commitment to people who basically built this country, then shame on all of us.”

Roberts characterized the legislation signing as a “tremendous victory” for miners and credited union members who made calls, wrote letters and rallied for a lot longer than they should have needed to do.

We’ve beaten up our members of Congress for their inaction and tribalism, but let’s give credit where credit is due. Here is an example of where legislators from both sides of the aisle were able to come together to keep a promise to workers who performed dangerous, backbreaking work to keep the wheels of industry humming when coal was king.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com