WASHINGTON, DC - Ahead of President Obama’s climate change speech today, Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) joined Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney and Co. to highlight the destructive consequences of the administration’s war on coal. The president’s plan seeks to circumvent Congress and directs the EPA to issue costly greenhouse gas regulations on new and existing power plants that will drive up electricity rates and destroy American jobs. Responding to president’s plan to shut down the coal industry, Whitfield said, “He is personally responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs. He obviously does not have much interest in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Wyoming, where the coal industry is so vitally important and we are losing jobs dramatically."
The president’s plan for new power plant emissions standards is just the latest effort in the administration’s war on coal. Over the past four and a half years, President Obama’s EPA has issued a suite of new regulations on America’s power sector that have already contributed to layoffs and the closures of power plants across the country. Despite the president’s hollow promises to support “all-of-the-above" energy, Daniel P. Schrag, a White House climate adviser, recently let the cat out of the bag, telling the New York Times, “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed."
