We’ve previously told you about the war that Barack Obama is waging on the coal industry. His declaration that he wanted to bankrupt coal plants apparently didn’t phase Ted Strickland, who is out there making a fool of himself by claiming that Obama is actually a friend to coal.
Now fellow Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown has joined Obama in the trenches to destroy coal jobs and cheap energy for Ohioans, who get 86% of their electricity from coal. One of Obama’s new regulations abuses executive power and is called Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology, or Utility MACT. It would make the building of new coal plants an impossibility and cost existing plants tens of billions of dollars to retrofit their systems. Many will choose to just close down like six of FirstEnergy’s plants. And, just like Obama predicted, and desires, MACT will cause electricity rates to necessarily skyrocket.
Wednesday, the Senate held a vote on a resolution that would have overturned Utility MACT. However, S.J. Resolution 37 failed by four votes. Sherrod Brown once again stood with Barack Obama and his extreme ideology, and sent a message to Ohioans that coal jobs and affordable energy just aren’t as important as toeing the line for Barack Obama.
Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel, who is running to replace Brown in the Senate, reacted with this statement (emphasis mine):
“Thirty-eight year politician Sherrod Brown’s vote to uphold the expensive Utility MACT regulation is a perfect example of how he has lost touch with the people he represents. Brown is fond of saying that choosing between jobs and environmental policy is a false choice, but today he used his vote on the Senate floor to make his choice clear by opposing coal jobs and coal-fired electricity plants. When it came down to it, Sherrod Brown did not have the courage to stand up to Barack Obama and radical environmentalists in order to protect jobs in Ohio’s coal industry. Ohio families should be concerned about the effect Sherrod Brown’s vote will have on energy prices and the reliability of our power supply.
Sherrod Brown’s vote not only means higher electricity bills for families and businesses, it threatens the jobs of our fellow Ohioans that work in or around the coal industry. I have been in the mines and have stood shoulder to shoulder with the very coal miners that Sherrod Brown’s vote threatens to impact, and I will continue to do everything possible to protect their jobs, which begins with voters firing Sherrod Brown and changing Washington by changing the people we send there.”
When Obama couldn’t even pass cap and trade with control of the House and a super-majority in the Senate, he famously boasted that in order to achieve his goal of bankrupting coal plants, he wasn’t giving up. He declared that “cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat. It was a means not an end, and I am going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” Now Sherrod Brown is supporting him and doing what he can to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket”. Let’s hope Ohioans fire Senator Sherrod Brown this November.
Cross-posted on Third Base Politics