[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16022]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               8-YEAR ASSAULT ON AMERICA'S COAL INDUSTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fleischmann). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to mark the end of a long, harsh, 
partisan, politicized campaign, unprecedented in American history. I am 
not talking about the recent election. No. We are finally at the end of 
the Obama administration's 8-year assault on Kentucky's and America's 
coal industry.
  In two terms, President Obama's policies have successfully put 
thousands of coal miners and utility workers into the unemployment 
line. In 2008, then-candidate Obama pledged that any company looking to 
build a coal-powered electric plant would be bankrupted. The combined 
regulations of the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Office of 
Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, and several other 
bureaucracies have turned that pledge into a reality, choking off 
investment in new state-of-the-art, clean-burning, coal-fired electric 
generation; and it led to the premature closing of existing plants.
  If we continue on this path, the other promise made by candidate 
Obama will also come to pass: electricity rates will necessarily 
skyrocket. And that would be a disaster for consumers, for whom energy 
prices are often the second or third largest line item in the family 
budget.
  I also think about industrial consumers and the many manufacturers in 
my district and around the Nation who depend on affordable, reliable 
energy that will face skyrocketing costs if we fail to act and reverse 
these administration policies. However, it is a new day; and voters--
particularly in the Rust Belt and Appalachia--turned out in November to 
close the book on this legacy of job-killing regulation and to seek a 
new path forward.
  President Obama said that elections have consequences, and this is 
true; but his administration ignored every electoral outcome since 
2010, doubling down on failed policies while the American people called 
for a different approach.
  The inverse is also true: consequences drive elections. The 
consequences of the Obama administration's unilateral decisions decided 
last November's election, and no place in this country felt those 
consequences as acutely as coal country.
  National coal production is at its lowest level in 35 years. Pike 
County, the long leading coal producer in Kentucky, until losing that 
title in 2012, is down 89 percent since its peak in 1996. Nationwide, 
consumption of coal has dropped nearly a third since 2007.
  In Kentucky, coal employment hit its lowest level in 118 years. To 
repeat, coal employment in Kentucky is now at its lowest level since 
1898. In 2009, 18,850 people were employed by coal. About 73,000 jobs 
were indirectly supported by that economic activity. Today, only about 
6,500 Kentuckians now work in the coalfields, and those losses have 
rippled throughout the economy. Yet this is the legacy that this 
administration will earn as it leaves office.
  Never in the history of our country has an administration singled out 
and targeted a lawful industry--in this case, an industry that has 
provided jobs and opportunities for American workers for generations, 
an industry that has literally powered America, and, through that 
overregulation, crushed an entire sector of our economy.
  Now, Obama administration apologists will say that depletion in 
Appalachian coalfields and new competition from natural gas are the 
primary factors in those job losses, but they don't give the regulators 
enough credit. The turnaround in natural gas production on State and 
private lands has been dramatic, to be sure, but relative price parity 
with coal does not explain two-thirds of mining jobs in Kentucky 
disappearing in 7 years.
  The administration has targeted coal supply and demand, prohibiting 
production leases, rejecting mining permit applications, stretching the 
Clean Air and Clean Water Acts against congressional intent, 
prohibiting new and existing plants from using coal--the list goes on 
and on.
  Many of these rules have been halted or overturned by the courts, and 
several more remain subject to challenge by the States and industry; 
but since the President could not get Congress' support for his agenda 
of banning the production and use of coal, most of these regulations 
can be unwound by the courts or the next administration.
  I urge the incoming Trump administration to do just that and to 
engage with Congress in a bipartisan fashion on our Nation's energy and 
environmental policies. The livelihoods of people in the coalfields, of 
those working in the manufacturing and rail industries, of families 
trying to keep their homes warm and their lights on must never again be 
the collateral damage in partisan warfare.
  I must address the issue of climate change. Let the last 8 years 
serve as a lesson to all of us. Let's never again attempt to solve 
problems through central planning by punishing innocent Americans whose 
paychecks put food on their table. Instead, let's address problems like 
climate change the American way: not through central planning or 
government, but through innovation, science, technology.
  While it will be a tough road back for coal country and it may never 
be the same after 8 years of regulatory attack, I do look forward to a 
new day dawning in the coalfields.

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