six common pollutants, there they are going colleague from

virginia, my dear friend, senator kaine. just one thing i want to touch on before we have senator casey speak on behalf of all the coal

miners that he represents in the state of pennsylvania. but on the black lung fund, a lot of people don't know the house of representatives basically two years ago passed reducing the fund from $1.10 to 55 cents. i called over at the house and i said to my friends, my colleagues over in the house, i said you would think that we don't need the money anymore because we've cured black lung. just the contrary. we have more diseases and more younger people getting black lung. i'll tell you why. when you have coal, you are cutting rock. and now we're cutting and hitting into more rock than ever before. we have more young minors contracting that. and that 55 cents a ton means a difference of solvency or not in curing people or the federal government's going to have to step in. and the coal mining and coal

minors have been proud to pay their way. they paid for their pensions. they paid for their health care. when they negotiate, this is how much was allowed to stay in the fund. they allowed that to be wiped out. some people received that money, the benefit, but not the people who worked for it. now they are trying to fix that with the coal they mind through the coal mine funding. that's all we're asking for. we're begging the majority leader of this respected body to put this bill on the floor and let the body vote on it. we've had good bipartisan support. everybody supports the people who provided the energy that protected this country. that's all we're asking for. and there's no one who are worked harder on this more than senator casey from pennsylvania, and that's another state we have are worked closely with and they have given very much back and with that, i yield the floor to

senator casey. mr. casey: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. casey: madam president, i rise to discuss this issue of pensions and the legislative proposal to address this crisis. i want to commend the senator from west virginia for his work on this. there's other words i could use for his determination over time and not just over months, but literally now over years. senator kaine, from virginia, senator brown, who will follow me. we're grateful for this combination of states coming together to stand up for workers. we know that this discussion on the floor of the united states senate takes place at a significant time. the house ways and means committee just passed the bipartisan butch lewis act, h.r. 397, just on july 10.

the house is taking much-needed action that is long past time that the united states senate do the same. in my home state it's a whole group of workers. obviously minors are part of this -- a big part of this. teamsters, bakery and confection ordinary workers -- confectionary workers all of them seeing failure of paying their pension. this could have economic consequences to communities in the commonwealth of pennsylvania as well as across the nation. tens of thousands of pensions of pennsylvanians could be at risk, including, and these are just some of the numbers, 11,831 coal minors and 21,460 teamsters. despite the challenges ahead, the good news is we have bipartisan legislation to deal with this crisis known as the butch -- to deal with this

pension crisis, the legislation is known as the butch lewis act. the bill creates a long program for troubled pensions. it's a commonsense solution that brings the public and private sector together to address this crisis. we must also pass legislation so we can address coal minor health and pension benefits. senator manchin, as i referred to earlier, has shown great leadership throughout this process, and we want to thank all of the senators who are with us today and others who are not with us on the floor necessarily but are with us by way of supporting legislation. we have a long way to go, however, and a mountain to climb for several reasons. there are a number of senators around this chamber who want to -- who, on a regular basis, when a multinational corporation

needs help, will pull out all the stops. they will overturn any stone, they will surmount any bear yes they will fight through any -- barrier, they will fight through any wall of opposition or resistance. that's the same kind of persistence and determination and resolve that we need for workers. in my case, whether it's a coal minor or a teamster or a bakery and confectionary worker, but it's long past due that we bring the same sense of urgency to the issues that involve workers as some brought to corporate tax issues just by way of one example, we were debating the 2017 -- november 2017 and december 2017 tax bill. my god, there was lobbists all over town and people scurrying back and forth to make sure that

corporate tax rate came down. to make sure that the rate a corporation was paying was lowered substantially. and, in the end, they got more than they asked for, in my judgment. and what was supposed to flow from that was an abundance of jobs, a rushing current of jobs and wage growth was supposed to come from that legislation. of course it didn't. some of us were right about our predictions, our prediction that we would not want to be right about, but we were. so if that kind of determination and concerted action and then the legislative result that flowed from that can be undertaken to help huge multinational corporations, i think the same effort should be undertaken on behalf of workers who have earned these pension benefits. this isn't something extra, this

isn't something new, this isn't something other than an earned benefit, and for some of them they earned it in the most difficult way possible, by going underneath the ground to mine coal year after year, and in some cases decade after decade. steven ukraine, the great novel -- steven crane, the great novellest wrote an essay in the turn of the century about a coal mine in my hometown of scranton, and he described all of the horrors, all of the darkness. he described the way of a minor could die, he called it the hundred perils, life threatening, but it talked about it in a moving way. he talked about the mine being a place of inkriewtable dark --

inscriewtable darkness, a tangible place of loneliness. loneliness because you can't see your hand be in front of your face and loneliness, of course, if you're injured on the job or if you have -- have an injury that debilitates you or if you, in fact, lose your life. tens of thousands of people lost their lives in the mine. and i know that's a long time ago. i know we've made advancements, but it is still hard work just as it is to do the job, as i mentioned -- the other jobs i mentioned, whether you're a teamster or a bakery and confectionary worker, just pick your particular work area or union. so we've got some work to do here, and we're going to have to fight through a lot, but we're grateful that we have some momentum and some sense of urgency that may not have been there only weeks ago. and, with that, madam president, i will yield the floor to my

colleague from the state of ohio. mr. brown: thanks, senator casey, for his work on behalf of workers in his whole 13 years in the senate and his work especially with mine workers and teamsters with the butch lewis act. senator kaine, who has been stalwart for these retirees, particularly in southwest virginia, and as his work as governor, and senator manchin was speaking earlier. we need to remind this body that 86,000 minors are facing a looming threat of massive cuts for the pension they earned, and what people in this body don't often understand, these minors and their widows are not getting rich from these pensions, these are pensions of $500 and $600, 1,200 minors could lose their pension because of the

bankruptcy. the bankruptcy courts could allow the corporations to shed their the liabilities, that sounds familiar where so often big companies go to court. these lawyers and these -- these judges and lawyers don't understand what collective bargaining is and don't understand the sacrifices these workers made to earn these pensions, shedding their liabilities is a fancy way of saying walk away from paying minors the health care benefits they earned. two years ago we worked to save thousands of minors health care. we have to do it again. we can't leave these workers behind just because of the date their company filed for bankruptcy. we have to make sure they don't lose retirement security on top of that. all 86,000 umwa mine workers are facing crippling pension countries. they are not alone, hundreds of thousands of teamsters in virginia and ohio and pennsylvania and iron workers in

cleveland and dayton, so many retirees and workers' pensions at risk. congress tried to ignore these retirees. retirees rally outside the capitol on 90-degree days in july and rallied outside the capitol on 15-degree days in february. we saw them around the capitol. they don't give up. many of them are veterans. they left the mines to serve their country. they went back into the mines. now we need, as they fought for us, we need to fight for .they it comes back to the dignity of work. when work has dignity, we honor the retirement security people earned. we honor work. we respect work. the dignity work is about wages, it's about their retirement, it's about their health care, it's about safety in the workplace. that's why i wear this pin, it's a depiction of a canary.

when a mine worker would take a canary in the mine and they didn't always have someone to protect them. too many people in this town don't understand the collective bargaining process. as senator casey said, this town is overrun with corporate lobbists up and down the hall and in senator mcconnell's office, lobbies lie up, never do workers get the same kind of favors when it comes to support like this. now, we made -- people, as i said, with collective bargaining, what people don't understand is people give up pensions today -- give up wages today to put money aside for their future pensions. we made progress on the bipartisan pensions committee. i want to thank senators portman and manchin and all the members, senator kaine and casey, all of

the members who put in work on this. i'm committed these miners, i know tim kaine is committed to these miners, businesses, and small businesses that depend on their success and livelihood on these mine workers getting these pensions that they earned. we'll continue to work for a bipartisan solution. if you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work, people like these mine workers. madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from virginia. mr. kaine: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. brown: madam president,

yesterday in the banking committee, we heard from one of facebook's executives about how that company -- if we can believe this, it doesn't even seem possible, how facebook wants to create its own monopoly money. after scandal after scandal we have seen with facebook when we saw the damage they have done to journalism and the compromise and betrayal of people's privacy even as the united nations said, again, believe it or not, what facebook did to contribute to the humanitarian disaster in what we know as burma where hundreds of people died, the united nations said that facebook contributed to the genocide, it almost doesn't sound believable, but to the genocide in that part of the world. but now after scandal after scandal, mr. president, facebook expects americans to trust

them -- to trust them with their hard-earned paychecks.