**Click HERE to download production quality footage of Brown’s remarks.**

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took to the Senate floor today to call for healthcare and retirement security for retired Ohio coal miners. Brown convened a roundtable with retired miners in Steubenville on Monday.

Brown has secured a commitment from Senate Republicans to extend healthcare for Ohio miners in a bill to fund the government at the end of April. He will continue fighting to shore up retired miners’ pensions as well.

Senator Brown’s full remarks as prepared for delivery are below:

Floor Statement of Senator Sherrod Brown – Mineworkers Pensions and Healthcare

April 5, 2017; Washington, D.C.

Today we mark the 7th anniversary of the tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. 29 mineworkers lost their lives on the job that day, doing what mineworkers have done for decades – working to feed their families and to power this country.

They knew mining was a dangerous job. But they also thought they lived in a country where we did everything we could to protect workers – both on the job, and later in retirement, with good pensions and health care.

Yet right now, mineworkers and their families in Ohio and across the heartland are on the verge of losing the healthcare and retirement that they’ve earned over a lifetime of backbreaking work.

And what has Washington done about it? Not a damn thing.

The clock is ticking down to April 29th, when the temporary miners’ health care fix we passed in December, along with funding for the entire federal government, runs out.

We must pass a solution, or face a government shutdown.

Senator Hatch gave me his word that a permanent health care fix will be in the upcoming continuing resolution. 

I will fight like hell to make sure we keep those promises, once and for all. 

This week, I held a roundtable with miners and their families in Steubenville, Ohio. I heard both the fear and the anger in their voices. 

One of the miners, John, said a coalminer’s life could be summed up in one word – “struggle.” From the hard work itself, to battles with the companies, to this current struggle for the benefits they earned, miners have struggled.

It seems like not a week goes by that we don’t see those UMWA t-shirts around the capitol.

Yesterday, mineworkers came to my office and dropped off a packet of letters. 

One woman from Pleasant City, Ohio, wrote to me about her husband Henry. Henry lost his leg beneath the knee in a mining accident 62 years ago.

She wrote to me: “It seems we have so many appointments to get the legs adjusted. It amounts to several thousand dollars. I have no idea how these would have been paid if it weren’t for the very good insurance Henry has.

“The pension and health care are so vitally important to each miner and family – for now and the future. Something has to be done now for the long range planning.”

That long range planning that miners and their families need is why another temporary band aid won’t cut it. 

The other day I ran into some UMWA members from Utah and West Virginia in the capitol, and they told me that people are, “scared to death.”

Why? Because some suits in Washington – whose own healthcare is paid for by their tax dollars – want to play politics. It’s a disgrace.

In Steubenville, one miner told me it felt like no one kept promises anymore. He said, all they’re asking is for Congress to “just keep the promise.”

I hope my colleagues will keep those words in mind. This isn’t about keeping their word to me – it’s about the workers in their states and mine who depend on it.

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