Ed Whitfield: “I am going to say that I'm a little bit shocked that people would be so critical of this bill and saying that this bill…”

“I am going to say that I'm a little bit shocked that people would be so critical of this bill and saying that this bill is not important. All of us know that President Obama, when he was running for President, made the comment that if he was elected President, you could build a coal-power plant, but he would bankrupt the industry. Our friends on the other side of the aisle say, well, coal is having problems today because natural gas prices are going down. Let's let the free market work, and coal is losing out because of these natural gas prices. The truth of the matter is, if natural gas prices were higher than they had been in the history of America, under this administration, if they finalize the greenhouse gas regulation, you cannot build a new coal-powered plant in America. One of the things that this bill does is it simply says, no, you're not going to regulate the greenhouse gases with this regulation. The second thing that it does is this administration has been more aggressive than any in recent history on regulating the coal industry. The second thing that we do is we simply require the Department of Commerce to lead an interagency committee that will complete analysis of key EPA rules and regulations and the impact that they have on jobs in America, on our ability to compete in the global marketplace, on the energy prices, on energy reliability, and on the benefits. What is so radical about that?…”