Rep. Andy Barr: Stop Obama’s war on coal

From his commitment to cut the federal budget deficit in half during his first term to his pledge to “have the toughest ethics laws of any administration in history,” President Barack Obama has compiled a long and infamous list of broken campaign promises. Tragically, one of the few promises the President managed to keep continues to kill jobs and create misery for thousands of working families in Kentucky.

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama was uncharacteristically blunt when discussing his plans for the coal industry when he remarked, “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them.” The spectacle of a presidential candidate pledging to financially destroy any American who dares to invest in a legal business was shocking by itself. Yet, this statement does not even begin to describe the scope and ferocity of President Obama’s War on Coal.

For more than four years, the Obama administration has abused the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to harass coal mining businesses and impede mining activities. Employing a “catch us if you can” strategy, the EPA has engaged in a practice of issuing regulations which exceed the agency’s legal authority and which it knows coal operators cannot meet, hoping to exact the maximum level of damage on mining operations before a court can reverse these regulations.

The Obama EPA’s most egregious abuse of power involves its deliberate bureaucratic foot-dragging that prevents coal mining businesses from expanding and diversifying their operations. In Kentucky alone, the EPA has inexplicably refused to act on 36 new permit applications, leaving coal mining businesses in a state of slow strangulation without the ability to seek judicial relief. Due to the EPA’s game playing, the supply of coal continues to shrink, leading to higher prices and a significant competitive disadvantage with natural gas.

In 2012 alone, Kentucky’s coal industry lost over 4,000 jobs and total mining employment dropped by 22 percent. Having depended on these jobs, which paid an average of $70,000 per year, thousands of Kentucky families now confront bleak economic prospects. If displaced miners can find other employment at all, it usually pays barely more than minimum wage.

President Obama’s War on Coal would thus be more accurately described as a war on coal miners and their families. They are the forgotten victims of policies that seem to value ideology over people. However, the Obama administration and their media acolytes express no compassion whatsoever for the distress of miners and their families. Instead, they suggest that coal is a “dying industry” that cannot compete with “cheap natural gas.” A misleading display indeed as the Obama EPA has placed its thumb on the economic scales to unfairly target and disadvantage the coal industry.

America possesses vast untapped coal reserves, which can provide a safe, reliable, and affordable domestic energy supply well into the foreseeable future. The Obama administration could address its environmental concerns by engaging the coal industry in a vibrant partnership to implement clean coal technologies. Instead, the administration continues to indulge its renewable energy fantasies, wasting millions on unproven “green” technologies that lack the necessary infrastructure or economic viability to serve America’s energy needs.

On May 6, 2013, I joined Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) in introducing H.R. 1829, the Coal Jobs Protection Act, in the United States House of Representatives. This legislation requires the EPA to act on mine permit applications in a timely manner, restoring certainty and predictability to the coal mining industry. This bill also reins in the EPA’s underhanded practices, such as skirting normal regulatory procedures by issuing regulations disguised as “guidance,” while forcing the EPA to account for the economic and employment consequences of its decisions.

In order to achieve a sustained economic recovery that will finally get Americans back to work, the federal government must cease its efforts to manipulate economic outcomes, so as to choose winners and losers. In particular, the Obama administration must discard its economic “enemies list,” which authorizes efforts to destroy entire industries while ignoring the human cost of such attacks. It is time for this Administration to embrace a productive approach that will not only help create more jobs here in Kentucky, but allow our coal mining community to keep food on their family tables.

Rep. Andy Barr is a Kentucky Republican.