Nick Rahall: “Enactment this year of the pending legislation will stave off any potential reduction in health care coverage for 54,000…”

“Enactment this year of the pending legislation will stave off any potential reduction in health care coverage for 54,000 retired coal miners and their widows, whose average age is 78 years old. These miners bravely served their country through both war and peace, many of them working deep within the bowels of this Earth to produce the coal that powered this Nation through both the industrial and now the technological revolution. We owe them a debt of gratitude and as a society would be ill-served by not keeping the promise to them of lifetime health care. In this regard I do want to express my sincere appreciation to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen), chairman of the Committee on Resources, for his support of this legislation. He has not only been of tremendous help on this, but a great many other pieces of legislation that this committee has produced. I salute him for his leadership. I also want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney), who is an original cosponsor of this bill, who does care very deeply about our Nation's coal miners. I salute him for his work as well. Finally, I want to say to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin), I thank her for working with me on this bill and for helping to make it possible for this legislation to be considered on the floor today.”