[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       STOP THE CLEAN POWER PLAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from West 
Virginia (Mr. Mooney) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MOONEY of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, right now, down the street 
at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, our 
very own West Virginia attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, is arguing 
against the unconstitutional coal and job-killing plan known as the 
Clean Power Plan.
  Time and again, President Obama has put radical leftwing 
environmentalists ahead of hardworking Americans. Obama's so-called 
Clean Power Plan is no different. This plan is a laundry list of 
unnecessary environmental restrictions that will increase energy costs 
and put even more Americans out of work.
  In West Virginia, we rely on coal for over 90 percent of our power 
generation. This regulation will shut down our power plants, kill our 
coal jobs, and dramatically raise home energy prices for West 
Virginians.
  I have been working at a Federal level to help put a stop to these 
job-killing policies. Last year, I sent a letter to Governor Tomblin, 
along with Representatives McKinley and Jenkins of West Virginia, 
urging him not to comply with the Clean Power Plan. Under the plan, 
States are forced to come up with a State Implementation Plan to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions on a timeline that would be very harmful to 
our State.
  This January, my first bill to pass the U.S. House of Representatives 
was aimed at putting a stop to the stream protection rule. When the 
rewrite of the rule was first proposed by the Office of Surface Mining, 
or OSM, they described it as a ``minor'' regulation that would only 
impact one coal region. However, the proposed stream protection rule 
contains sweeping changes that amount to modifying or amending 475 
existing rules. The proposed rule would destroy up to 77,000 coal 
mining jobs nationwide, including up to 52,000 in the Appalachian 
region.
  My bill, H.R. 1644, the Supporting Transparent Regulatory and 
Environmental Actions in Mining Act, simply requires a study to be 
completed to determine if the rules governing mining need to be updated 
or changed. It calls for all scientific data used in rulemaking to be 
made publicly available and prevents the Office of Surface Mining from 
overstepping their regulatory role in implementing Clean Water Act 
provisions.
  When I campaigned to represent the people of the Second Congressional 
District of West Virginia in Congress, I promised that I would fight 
for the coal industry and the hard workers of our State. West Virginia 
and our country need the Clean Power Plan to be stopped indefinitely 
before more damage to the coal industry is done.

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