Andy Barr: “Today I rise to mark the end of a long, harsh, partisan, politicized campaign, unprecedented in American history. I am…”

“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.…”