The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)'s Pension Fund is in serious trouble. A proposed bill, the Miners Protection Act of 2015, would bail out the pension plan by transferring $490 million in federal funds from mine reclamation to the pension fund. However, this bill would not be necessary if the Obama Administration had not instituted regulations on ozone, mercury, carbon, coal-mine dust, among others. President Obama's regulations have put all public coal companies, and many private ones, out of business. When coal companies go out of business, so do their pension plans.[ia] And when thousands and thousands of miners no longer pay into the fund because they are out of work, the pension plan suffers.
