Report: cutting black lung funding will cost taxpayers billions - Entrepreneur Generations

A recent cut to the tax coal companies pay to help miners with black-lung disease will cost taxpayers at least $15 billion by 2050, according to a new report from national watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"An excise tax rate on mined coal that funds the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund expired at the beginning of 2019 due to inaction by Congress. That led to a reduction in the amount coal companies pay into the fund, which pays benefits and medical bills for miners diagnosed with black lung disease," Dylan Lovan reports for The Associated Press. "An excise tax rate of $1.10 per ton of underground mined coal was cut by more than half to about 50 cents in the new year. The fund took in about $450 million in revenue in fiscal year 2017."

Autumn Hanna, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that Congress was shifting billions of dollars in liability from coal companies to taxpayers; the report said the fund's debt could reach $26 billion by 2050. The Labor Department confirmed earlier this year that a shortfall in the Black Lung Trust Fund would be dealt with by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2rF2Br1 Report: cutting black lung funding will cost taxpayers billions - Entrepreneur Generations

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