Obama Goes for Coal Choke-Out

Eight years into a sustained offensive against an entire American industry, President Obama is closing in for the kill on the coal business.

The three-pronged assault on coal from the administration, well-funded radical environmentalist groups, and cheaper natural gas, had already obliterated a staggering 191,000 mining jobs by September 2014. Experts estimate at least 35,000 more have gone down the tubes since then.

Trump hammered the point home … calling Clinton a “horror show” for the coal industry, and calling the November election “the last shot for the miners.” 

Not content to merely cripple this critical industry for much of the nation, the president’s Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department are pushing a fresh round of bureaucratic options to push more coal companies into bankruptcy.

Major policy decisions are not typically made in August, a month in which most politicians and the White House take a break from drastic action.

The Interior Department is advising states to hold coal companies accountable for the cost of cleaning up the very coal mines shuttered by the administration’s regulatory assault. The EPA is set to impose more rules mandating coal companies’ responsibility for these closed mines before November.

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“Lack of global demand for coal, competition from low-cost shale gas, and the unprecedented and continuing retirement of coal-fired power plants are clear signs that the energy industry is undergoing a major transformation,” said Interior Department office director Joe Pizarchik, one of the chief architects of the president’s “War on Coal.”

Several large coal companies have already declared bankruptcy just this year. Usually when that happens, the federal government picks up the tab for mine cleanup, but the feds now say none of these permits will be granted for the next five years and the ruined coal companies have to do it themselves.

Many of those companies, already driven to the brink of bankruptcy or already in bankruptcy protection, simply do not have the revenue to comply with the latest, brutal regulatory assault.

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In direct contrast to the Obama administration’s unprecedented assault on an American industry, Donald Trump has pledged to put more miners back to work and repeal the out-of-control regulations and restrictions being heaped on the coal business.

“We will put our coal miners and steelworkers back to work, where they want to be,” he said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club Monday.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton made headlines earlier this year for pledging during a March town hall with CNN to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Trump hammered the point home during a campaign rally in western Virginia Wednesday, calling Clinton a “horror show” for the coal industry, and calling the November election “the last shot for the miners.”