Political Quotes

“Make no mistake about it, the stream protection rule is not about protecting streams. It was designed for one purpose--to regulate the coal mining industry out of business. It is the centerpiece of the Obama administration's war on coal. The simple truth is revealed when you begin to follow the Office of Surface Mining's 7-year approach to writing this job-killing rule, a process which began only after the previous administration discarded the rule's predecessor, a 2008 regulation that underwent 5 years of extensive environmental review and public comment. That was just the beginning. Since then, millions of taxpayer dollars have been needlessly spent developing this rule. Contractors were hired to help rewrite the rule, but then subsequently fired when it was leaked that the initial revisions of the rule would cost thousands of jobs, and that was within the first few months of this attempted rewrite. Unfortunately, estimated job losses have only skyrocketed since the final rule was released. What is troubling is that, throughout the rule's rewrite, the administration refused to visit mines or to actually assess the impact of the rule on operating mines. There were attempts to cover up data that concealed the rule's true economic impact.…”