Senator Rockefeller fiddles while the coal industry burns

Deneen Borelli
The Daily Caller
3/24/2011

A plan to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions is gaining momentum, but Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is playing the spoiler to the growing bi-partisan effort to stop the federal agency’s power grab.

With the exception of Rockefeller, all of the members of the West Virginia congressional delegation — Republican and Democrat — support the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011. It would limit the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Obama ordered the EPA to regulate them, based on a Supreme Court ruling, after his cap-and-trade proposal failed on Capitol Hill.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently voted 34 to 19 in favor of the act, but Rockefeller criticized a similar amendment to small business legislation offered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying, “I won’t support a total dismantling of the EPA, and I am disappointed with Republican efforts to bring up this legislation, which has no chance of ever becoming law.”

Rockefeller is offering an opposing amendment with a similar EPA prohibition, but only for two years — kicking the can past the 2012 elections…

…While Rockefeller fiddles with legislative tactics to preserve the EPA’s power, however, the coal industry burns.

Rockefeller is siding with Obama and environmental extremists, who want to end the use of coal, over his constituents, who rely on the coal industry for jobs.

While Obama wages his war on coal, Rockefeller is turning his back on the coal country communities that sent him to Washington. Rather than considering the coal industry that is so vital to West Virginia’s economy, Rockefeller — like a double agent in a spy story — is aiding the progressives in a waiting game that ends with the death of the industry…

Read the complete article at The Daily Caller.

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