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.

MSHA’s overall budget was cut by nearly $2 million. But using very fuzzy math, MSHA actually claims this year’s budget is a $6 million increase over Bush’s 2008 budget request. What the agency conveniently, or perhaps deliberately, fails to note is that the 2009 funding is still cut over what Congress actually appropriated for mine safety in 2008. Quite a spin!

Along with cutting funding for coal mine safety, Bush late last year appointed Richard Stickler as acting head of MSHA. Stickler is a former coal company executive whose nomination was twice rejected by the Senate. By naming him “acting” assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, Bush again circumvented Senate confirmation. He had used a recess appointment in 2006 to put Stickler in charge of MSHA.

Our friends at American Rights at Work say that Stickler—whose mines he managed at injury rates that were double the national average—could use a little help in making sure MSHA does its job.

You can help, too. Click here to send Stickler a note urging him, among other things, to enforce new mine safety laws, fight for better safety and health rules and “think like a miner, not a mine executive.”

Now there’s an idea.

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