[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 94 (Thursday, June 27, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H4090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  COAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, in May, more than 130 
employees at PBS Coals in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, were laid off. 
It was the third round of layoffs by the company in less than a year. 
The men and women of PBS Coals joined more than 5,000 coal miners who 
lost their jobs in 2012.
  With his announcements of ``Cap-and-Trade: The Sequel,'' the 
President recently declared not just a war on coal but a war on jobs. 
It won't just be coal miners who lose their jobs or boilermakers who no 
longer are building and maintaining power plants, but also thousands of 
laborers, electricians, operating engineers, steamfitters, welders, 
plumbers, carpenters, machinists, and railroad workers will be out of 
work--real people, real faces, real families. They'll join the 130 at a 
Joy Mining factory in Millersburg, Kentucky, who were laid off in 
March; in Peoria, Illinois, the hundreds of boilermakers at a Komatsu 
equipment factory who were let go; and, in Erie, Pennsylvania, where GE 
is laying off 950 workers at its locomotive plants because less coal 
means less work for the railroads.
  These men and women are out of work because, at the country's 600 
coal plants, more than 20 percent of all coal-fired units are being 
shut down in part due to EPA regulations. And that was before the 
President's speech on Tuesday announcing new global warming 
regulations. Now, more families will be out of work and struggling to 
get by. These are American families trying to pay off mortgages, car 
loans, put their children through school. Real Americans who sweated 
and toiled, all in hopes that the next generation of their children 
would climb higher towards the American Dream.
  The President's new coal regulations will come at a cost of $184 
billion and 180,000 fewer jobs each year in mining, transportation, 
manufacturing, and power generation. As coal energy is cut off, it 
means higher electric bills. Families will spend $400 more each year on 
their energy bill. That's on top of the $2,000 more each year they pay 
for gasoline. And higher energy bills means higher manufacturing costs, 
hurting our steel industry even more as it struggles to compete in 
world markets.
  We should be modernizing, not shutting down these coal-powered 
plants. We can burn coal cleanly. Since 1970, coal has tripled in its 
use. Meanwhile, sulfur dioxide emissions are down 56 percent and 
nitrous oxide is down 38 percent. Mercury emissions in the U.S. dropped 
roughly 60 percent since the 1950s.
  Let's bring back the campaign promise made by President Obama for 
clean coal and use the talent of our scientists and engineers and our 
tradesmen for better technology.
  This week, families throughout America were startled when a top Obama 
science adviser was quoted in The New York Times saying, ``A war on 
coal is exactly what's needed.''
  But this is not just a war on coal. It's a war on the American worker 
and their family. These families want high-paying jobs and lower energy 
bills. They want doors to open, not to have them slam in their faces. 
They do not want Washington to surrender American jobs to foreign 
manufacturers. These fathers, these mothers, and these children will 
not surrender. They are waking up and saying, Stop the war on our jobs. 
And they are not going to sit back quietly much longer.

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