On this week's premiere broadcast of Mountain Stage, you'll hear performances from Bettye LaVette, Kim Richey, Keller Williams, The Langan Band, and Megan Jean’s Secret Family. This episode was recorded live at the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium in Athens, Ohio.
West Virginia’s Congressional leaders will be asked to vote this week on a bill to fund the government through April 2017, but that bill may also be the only hope for thousands of coal miners set to lose their healthcare benefits at the end of the year.
West Virginia Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito have been trying for more than a year to get Congress to pass the Miners Protection Act.
The bill takes money out of a fund used to clean up abandoned mines and puts it into a fund that pays for the pension and healthcare benefits of thousands of coal miners, many right here in West Virginia.
But the Miners Protection Act won’t be put to a vote before Congress heads home for their scheduled holiday break this week.
Instead, Sen. Manchin said last week the funding would be added to a continuing resolution that would fund federal government operations through the spring. That resolution must be approved by Friday, when previous funding legislation runs out.
Manchin said, however, it was unlikely funding for both the healthcare and pension pieces would be included.
At a press conference in Charleston Monday morning, Capito said she had not seen the continuing resolution written in the House of Representatives, but that she was fighting for the benefits of more than 16,000 miners and retirees will lose their healthcare at the end of the month if Congress does not step in.
“That’s priority one, I think, is to preserve the healthcare benefits for those that are getting ready to lose it,” Capito said.
“We don’t know exactly how this is going to roll out, but it better roll out that those folks are going to get the healthcare that they deserve.”
Capito said if funding to save the pension benefits of retired miners is not included in the federal government funding bill this week, she is committed to returning to them later.
Doug Skaff, former minority leader for the West Virginia House of Delegates, was bitten by two copperhead snakes Wednesday while taking down campaign materials in Boone County.
On this West Virginia Morning, the stage is now set for a two man, two party political race for governor of West Virginia. Randy Yohe gives us an initial look at what we can expect from the Republican and the Democratic nominees.
The United States Postal Service announced Monday it would pause its implementation of further mail network changes until January 2025, which could impact a mail processing facility in West Virginia.