Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to start by echoing what Senator Brown and Senator Capito and others have said and thank my friend from West Virginia for continuing to wage this fight. It feels a little bit like deja vu all over again. We have been down here time and time and time again to simply reinforce the case that the Senator from West Virginia just went through in terms of history.

I think it is sometimes interesting that--I'm sure that the Senator from West Virginia did it earlier than I, but it was the early 1990s, the first time I went underground to see the working conditions of miners across this country. Even though the advances in technology in the 20th century and 21st century still endure, it is hard work. It is gritty work. Many of the miners who have spent years working underground come out with black lung and other illnesses. Their life expectancy is much shorter than so many other jobs.

The Senator from West Virginia has already gone through at some length the historic commitment to these miners. It started with President Truman. It was renewed a number of times, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Through this past year--again because of the Senator from West Virginia and those of us who tried to help--his State has the most, probably Kentucky has the second most, and Virginia has about 10,000 folks who are affected. We did finally force--and I want to thank the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden. We did have a hearing. Families came in. All they said to us was: Keep your promise. The United States of America said: We are going to honor this commitment to make sure that your pension benefits and your health care benefits are honored.

The remarkable thing here--and many folks, including myself, are greatly concerned about our debt and deficit. So how are we going to pay for this? We have even identified a source of funding that is industry generated. So any of the typical ``well, maybe not now'' or ``what if'' or ``how did this happen''--all of those issues have been addressed.

The Finance Committee held a hearing on the Miners Protection Act. Miners from Southwest Virginia came in, a couple of folks from Grundy, a couple of folks from Wise, which is very close to the State of West Virginia, close to Ohio--folks whose lives were going to be dramatically affected if these health care benefits and pension benefits are taken away.

Disproportionately, as the Senator from West Virginia has repeatedly said, the vast majority of those individuals, candidly, are not former miners, but they are the widows. So many folks have passed that the widows now depend upon these benefits in many ways. They are still the lifeblood of the communities that have been hard hit by the changing nature of power generation, by government regulation, by a host of other things.

Last week, on that incredibly warm day, my good friend the Senator from Ohio and I were there, speaking to miners from all across the region and others who were supportive of the cause. The question I got as I walked through the crowd was: Are you guys going to keep your word? It was not Democrat, Republican--not particulars of the bill.

Are you going to keep your word that this country made to the coal miners and their beneficiaries that their pension and health care benefits are going to be honored?

So we are going to be tested on this, at least in terms of the next step. As a member of the Finance Committee, my hope and expectations have been--and my friend, the Senator from Ohio, a member of the Finance Committee, and in this case we have the support of the chairman and the ranking member--that we would mark up this legislation, that we would not add all kinds of extraneous other things that would take us off course or take us down into some other briar patch but that we would honor this commitment on the UMWA health and pension benefits.

Well, as things often happen here, it got delayed. But I for one don't believe, even if we get our CR done and get Zika done, that the Finance Committee should leave town without having this markup. That commitment was made earlier in the year. I went through a whole group of folks, not just from Virginia, but from West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky and said: Yes, I believe we are going to at least get the next step done and get this bill marked up out of the Finance Committee. And then it should be not just reported out of the Finance Committee but actually acted on here on the floor of the Senate.

We have all come and gone through the facts and the details on the variety of times that we have spoken about this issue on the floor. My appeal to my friends the chair and ranking member of the Finance Committee is that this date of September 21 does not slip again. I know in that committee markup we will have the votes. We need to get that bill reported out. We need to get it acted on before the end of the year because, as the Senator from West Virginia has so relentlessly continued to make the point, this is not something that we can kick the can on anymore. People start losing these benefits that their lives depend on at the end of calendar year 2016.

So I say to my friend from West Virginia and my friend the Senator from Ohio that we are in this together. It is bipartisan. There are not enough bipartisan things that are done here. I thank my friend from West Virginia for being relentless on this issue. I thank my friend the Senator from Ohio--sometimes it is an issue that looks as if it is stacking up more on one side than the other--for his leadership on this as well.

I tell you, I think we owe it to those miners and families who depend upon these benefits to keep our word, keep the word we told them we were going to keep back when we held the hearing, keep the word that all of us said to the miners and others who rallied last week in the middle of that heat. If we do our job next Wednesday, we will be able to keep our word, bring this bill to the floor, and get it passed.

So with that, I thank the Senator from West Virginia.
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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, after one of the longest recesses in modern history, Congress returned last week to Washington. Unfortunately, it seems that some of our colleagues have been more interested in continuing to play politics with the health and welfare of the American people than in getting the job done.

Nearly 19,000 Americans have been infected by the Zika virus, including hundreds of pregnant women. Yet Congress has failed to pass an emergency funding bill to address the Zika crisis, and as I discussed on the floor earlier this afternoon, thousands of retired mineworkers, many of them suffering from serious illnesses, are still waiting for us to work on the bipartisan Miners Protection Act.

This afternoon, I would like to focus on another area where unfortunately the Senate has failed to do its job--an important job that is part of our constitutional requirements--which is to make sure we end this unprecedented obstruction regarding the vacancy on the Supreme Court. It has now been a recordbreaking 182 days since President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland, and yet 182 days later, the Supreme Court is still forced to function one Justice short. It is an example of Washington dysfunction at its absolute worst.

The Senate confirmed Supreme Court Justices during Presidential election years at least 17 times, so there is no reason this should be a partisan issue. Until recently, both parties have recognized the Senate's constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on the President's nominations to the Supreme Court.

President Reagan himself said: ``Every day that passes with a Supreme Court below full strength impairs the people's business in that crucially important body.''

The truth is, Judge Garland's qualifications and dedication to public service are beyond reproach.

Again, today, as I did earlier this year, I am strongly urging my colleagues to do the job we were elected to do. Let's go ahead and vote on Judge Garland. If you don't want to support him, that is your right, but let's give him that hearing and take on that vote.

Let's make sure we take on the very important health care crisis around Zika. Let's make sure we don't leave the American people hanging in terms of a continuing resolution. Let's pass that and make sure the government stays funded.

Again, it is time for us to get to work. It is time for the Senate to do its job so we can make sure that when we go back to our constituents--as we continue with the final weeks before the election-- we can look them in the eye and say: We have done our duty.

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