[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 14688]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     CONGRESS MUST STAND UP AGAINST UTILITY CUTS ACROSS THE MIDWEST

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. The Stop the War on Coal Act is up today. It is the 
coal industry which is waging war on our mountains by leveling them, 
war on our lungs by burning dirty fuel, war on healthy children by 
being the single largest source of mercury exposure, war on our rivers 
and streams by filling them with toxic waste, war on groundwater 
through poisonous ash fills, war on its workers through conditions 
which continue to kill, war on families by breaking unions and by 
relentlessly reducing jobs, war on our national debt by taking in 
billions of subsidies, and now war on ratepayers of municipal utilities 
across the Midwest.
  Time to stop this war.
  Peabody Coal's Prairie State coal plant in southern Illinois has 
brokered a series of shady deals that puts 217 local utilities here, 
across the Midwest, on the hook for billions of dollars for energy they 
may never even get while paying twice the market price--a corrupt 
boondoggle that will raise utility rates and saddle many publicly owned 
utilities with crushing debt obligations.
  Congress must stand up for the utility cuts in this areas.

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