Energy 2014: New Battles Loom in a Long War

[Valin]

:

Alexis Simendinger
January 13, 2014

This is the year President Obama could spark a war. And it won't be overseas.

In key states important in a midterm election year, conservative activists and coal country representatives have joined forces to accuse Obama and congressional Democrats who support him of trying shutter an industry. These efforts, Republicans say, are killing jobs and making electricity more expensive for consumers.

"Mr. Obama's actions are a human issue to me," Bob Murray, a West Virginia coal company president, told a Charleston audience last month. "I know the names of those Americans whose jobs and family livelihoods are being destroyed as he appeases his radical environmentalist, unionist, liberal elitist, Hollywood character and other constituencies that got him elected.”

 

All sides are poised for a noisy battle this coming summer. That’s when they believe the president intends to make a show of melding the government’s regulatory powers to his past rhetoric about reducing man-made carbon emissions.

 

“I think this is a very different year,” David Goldston, director of government affairs for the National Resources Defense Council, told RCP. “The administration has laid out clear policies with deadlines. Now there’s a plan. They’ve made the substantive decisions, and they’re putting together a team to carry it out.”

 

(Snip)