House Democrats, led by Rep. George Miller of California, held a forum this morning on mine safety in reaction to the recent disasters at the Sago and Aracoma Alma mines in West Virginia. The House Republican leadership refused to allow an official hearing in the Education and Workforce Committee. While the Republicans are supposedly waiting for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to complete its own internal investigation, miners' relatives are not content to wait. One woman, Freda Sorah, who lost her husband in the September 2001 mine disaster in Brookwood, Alabama, said simply that MSHA "cannot be trusted to investigate themselves."

As the tragedy at the Sago mine was unfolding, it became clear to a number of people that the unquestioningly pro-corporate, 'deregulate everything' attitude of the Bush administration had contributed to the problem. Bush had essentially invited a fox to guard the hen house, appointing a mining industry executive to head up MSHA, while mine safety regulations were either rolled back or halted. As The Washington Post pointed out shortly after the Sago disaster, even though safety citations were issued and minimal fines were levied, MSHA inspectors had no real teeth with which to back up their warnings.

...Sago's recent history illustrates what mine-safety experts say is a long-standing flaw in enforcement of federal mining regulations. While inspectors issue a blizzard of paper citations each year, these violations rarely translate into serious penalties, even for the worst offenders, according to government records and interviews with current and former regulators. Large fines are rare, and the most serious sanctions -- such as mine closure -- are almost never used, documents show.

This pattern has been even more pronounced under the Bush administration, which came into office with a promise to forge cooperative ties between regulators and the mining industry. During the past five years, the number of mines referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution has dropped steadily, from 38 in 2000 to 12 last year.

This was a problem that had been growing for some time, and the Bush administration did nothing to correct its course. Bush's Labor Department, so focused on stacking the deck against workers and helping out corporations, sat back and ignored mine safety. To put it more succinctly, Wanda Blevins, a woman whose husband was also killed at the Brookwood mine (not at Sago, as Reuters reports) is left wondering if her husband died in vain. She was promised after her husband David's death that things would improve. They didn't.

"Had they been improved and followed, gentlemen, you would not be dealing with Sago today," she said. "Did my husband die in vain? I don't know. He should not have died."

The Republicans think that they can make this issue go away by preventing hearings. I'm glad the Democrats side-stepped that accountability dodge to bring these families' concerns to the fore. This is about preventing further tragedies in one of the most dangerous industries in the world, not partisan politics. MSHA, the Labor Department, and the Bush administration know what has to be done. They've known for quite some time. So why isn't it done already?