Benefits for Coal Miners with Black Lung Falling Behind - Tens of thousands of coal miners across the country are disabled by or have died from

In the summer of 2022, Congress raised the black lung excise tax, the only source of revenue for the trust fund. [...] Revenue to the trust fund over the past four years, shown in Table 3, demonstrates that the trust fund can support the modest increase in costs that would be associated with a cost of living adjustment to monthly black lung benefits. [...] Source: 6 Source: 7 Though the BLDTF is over $4 billion in debt, since the mid-1990s revenues to the BLDTF have actually exceeded the cost of benefit payments. [...] The BLDTF debt was restructured in FY2009, at this time, the cumulative debt was reduced from $10.4 billion at the end of FY2008 to $6.2 billion by the end of FY2009. [...] Congress can pass legislation to update miners’ black lung benefits by calculating the benefits based on the actual cost of living instead of the current system — which ties benefits to federal employee pay scales, not to inflation.