Black-Lung Boondoggle

Along with farm subsidies, shipbuilding subsidies and harbor projects, another well-intentioned federal-aid program can be added to the long list of those that have degenerated into pork-barrel giveaways. It is the black-lung program, which is financed by the U.S. taxpayer. Designed to compensate the families of coal miners, dead or alive, who were victims of the debilitating coal-dust disease, the program has become a much-abused boondoggle.

The first black-lung bill was signed in 1969, but eligibility requirements were so severe that last year the President and Congress got together on a liberalizing amendment. The election-year amendment was enthusiastically backed by many Congressmen from the coal states--notably Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky--and by President Nixon. Initial cost estimates varied greatly, from $32 million a year to $380 million a year. Now the benefits are being paid to about 475,000 miners, widows and other beneficiaries at a rate of $52 million a month.

Few dispute that benefits should be paid to the families of miners who were disabled because the companies--and the Government--until recently were lax about dust-control standards in the mines. But Donald Davis, an official at national Social Security headquarters, charges that he has been pressured by superiors into approving benefits for "frauds." These range from twice-married widows collecting two separate benefit checks to "black-lung-disabled" healthy young men who worked in the mines only briefly. Prodded by Davis, the General Accounting Office issued a report citing abuses, though its criticism was milder than Davis'.

The trouble is that the program is too liberal. To receive benefits, which are $170 to $340 a month, a miner no longer needs to be Xrayed. All that is required is a physician's statement that he has a serious breathing problem. Doctors and clinics with a reputation for being "easy testers" get the miners' business, and the Government pays the fees. Lawyers collect large sums for handling the simple paper work for filing claims. One lawyer, Kelsey Friend of Pikeville, Ky., has pocketed more than $2,000,000 over several years.

The program has been criticized on Capitol Hill by Republican Senators Jacob Javits of New York, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, and others. Critics are upset by reports of abuses and by the fact that the benefits are being paid by taxpayers and not the coal companies. The Government will pay lifetime benefits for any miner who applies up to next Jan. 1; after that, the coal-mining companies are supposed to pay any new claimants. But the companies may even avoid doing that. Carl Perkins, a Democratic Congressman from Kentucky, is talking about submitting a bill that would delay the turnover to private funding at least another two years.

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