Bush Budget Shafts Coal Mine Safety

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/06/bush-budget-shafts-coal-mine-safety/

by Mike Hall, Feb 6, 2008

If protecting the safety and health of the nation’s coal miners is as important to President Bush as he has claimed over his years in office—years in which 232 coal miners were killed on the job—why did he slash $10 million from the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA’s) budget for coal mine safety?

Maybe, says Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts, it’s because he doesn’t really care that much.

President Bush has told America’s coal miners that he doesn’t care about making the improvements so clearly needed to keep them safe and healthy on the job.

Bush’s 2009 fiscal year budget, released yesterday, drops MSHA’s funding for the coal mine enforcement from $155 million to $145 million. The budget comes on the heels of a year in which


33 coal miners were killed—including six miners and three rescue workers at Utah’s Crandall Canyon Mine.


MSHA failed to conduct mandatory mine safety inspections at 107 coal mines because there are not enough trained, qualified inspectors to do them.


It was revealed that MSHA has failed to fine mine owners for than 4,000 safety and health violations its inspectors uncovered since 2000.


MSHA missed the deadline to issue new federal rules for mine safety teams and was forced to recruit volunteers from other safety agencies to help MSHA meet upcoming deadlines or other mine safety rules.

Since January 2006, 82 coal miners have been killed and Roberts points to Bush administration neglect and coal operators’ deliberate evasion of “safety and health laws and regulations at their whim.” He calls Bush’s cuts “absurd.”

A rational person would think that solving these critical issues would require an improvement in funding for the federal government’s enforcement watchdog, so that MSHA would have the resources it needs to do its job. But that kind of thinking is apparently in short supply in the White House these days.

FULL story at link.