Mitch Gets The Coal-ed Shoulder From Amy McGrath

This ad is up in Kentucky this week from Democratic US Senate candidate Amy McGrath, and yeah, this one's going to leave a mark.

Devastating ad for McConnell pic.twitter.com/K80B0DaSPm

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 23, 2019

Understand coal mining still happens in Kentucky and it will for the foreseeable future. Even if coal mining stopped across the state tomorrow, the issue of miners needing health benefits from a lifetime of work in dangerous conditions would still be important to people here and across coal states. This meeting happened at the end of last month.

About 12,000 former miners nationwide rely on the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund to cover costs and make ends meet, but a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that the fund is $4.3 billion in debt, and a tax on coal which funded the trust fund was cut in half in January. Many advocates for the fund worry it may soon become insolvent.

There is no cure for black lung disease, which is caused by the inhalation of dust particles in mines leading to severe lung damage. Cases of the deadly disease have surged in recent years in Eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia.

The Kentucky Republican, who the miners and their advocates see as key to passing any sort of Congressional assistance, told the group of miners in a brief statement “that they were going to be taken care of,” said Kenny Fleming, a former Pike County miner who suffers from black lung.

“We just have to take him at his word and then we also have to keep him at his word, which I think that’s what we’re after,” Fleming said. “Hopefully he will come through.”

Fleming said McConnell was “kind of vague” and didn’t provide much detail on how the miners would be assisted.

Jimmy Moore, the head of the Letcher County Black Lung Association, said he found McConnell’s conduct “rude.” After the meeting, he said McConnell wouldn’t do anything to reinstate the tax which funded the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.

“He might’ve stayed a minute,” Moore said, referring to McConnell’s quick exit from the meeting. “...It was a worthless trip, that’s the way I feel.”

Robert Steurer, a spokesperson for McConnell, said the senator was “glad to welcome his constituents to the Capitol,” and that members of McConnell’s staff spoke with the miners for about an hour.

Mitch's staff was there for about an hour.  Mitch wasn't. Too busy being the Grim Reaper of the Senate, making sure nothing passes.

For Mitch McConnell to show up for literally all of 60 seconds to "talk" to coal miners with black lung and then vanish is going to hurt him.

And it should.