Steven Holt: “I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes. Mr. DeFAZIO. The Obama administration leased out 2.1 billion tons of coal…”

“I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes. Mr. DeFAZIO. The Obama administration leased out 2.1 billion tons of coal in the Powder River Basin in its first term. That is twice what the Bush administration leased in the 4 years before that. Recent accounts from the GAO lead us to believe that maybe they were a little too cozy with the industry and in fact that those deals were a little too sweet for that 2.1 billion tons of coal. So that is a war on coal? No. What they are talking about is actually less coal is being used to produce electricity. Now they are also the party of market forces and capitalism. Well, guess what? Market forces and capitalism have reduced the use of coal. Natural gas was really, really, really cheap a couple of years ago. Coal used to generate electricity. It totally tanked. It had nothing to do with the Obama administration. It had to do with market forces, and they worship the market. I hope they are not trying to undo market forces here and have some kind of socialist dictate. So what has happened is coal use has bumped up a little bit as natural gas has become a little bit more expensive. But that was about economics and not policy. The bottom line here is should we allow, without any regulation, blowing the tops off mountains, dumping them into valleys, filling in streams, and pretend it has no impact on the environment. And I would say ``no.'' {time} 1300”