By Rep. David McKinley, June 2, 2015

The Friday before Memorial Day Weekend, local newspapers in West Virginia headlined with the devastating story that another 2,268 coal miners lost their jobs.

If that’s not horrific enough, what about the future for those who depend on the mining industry? This includes hard working men and women who transport the coal; the conveyor companies who make the miles of belting; and the manufacturers of roof bolting equipment and continuous miners.

All of them will suffer. Many will leave. Apartments and homes will sit empty. Grocers and pharmacies will feel the drop in sales. Schools enrollment will decline. Local tax revenue will suffer. The cycle of despair will deepen.

The relentless pursuit of President Obama’s War on Coal has virtually brought our coal industry to its knees. For the 2,268 families and those that depend on coal for their livelihood, Obama’s extreme environmental policies have succeeded. For him, “mission accomplished.”

Few in the coal industry took the president’s hostility seriously enough in 2008 when he campaigned on the theme of depriving our nation its dependence on coal for energy. Even the UMWA endorsed him. Most thought his rhetoric was merely campaign hyperbole, but it has proven to be anything but.

President Obama’s War on Coal has been waged primarily through the EPA. It has been so unyielding that utilities are gradually switching to natural gas because of the unknown costs of the next EPA regulation if they were to continue using coal.

But fortunately for the industry, there remains a voracious appetite for burning coal around the world. So coal executives turned to exporting their product to nations around the globe; but once again President Obama put up roadblocks. Federal permits are required for export facilities and have become notoriously difficult to achieve. One company has been waiting nearly six years for its permit.

Then the president bullied the federally-run Export-Import Bank and the World Bank to deny loans to emerging nations who plan on building coal fired power plants.

Two thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight families don’t understand what they’ve done wrong.

The president claims he is crushing the fossil fuel industry for the sake of the climate and public health. But scientists claim that Obama’s directives will have virtually no impact on the global climate.

According to the United Nation’s report, halting all use of coal in America will reduce the global level of CO2 in the atmosphere by merely 0.02 percent. That’s right. He is disrupting our entire American economy in order to reduce emissions by two tenths of one percent.

Therefore, this dogmatic pursuit to lessen our dependence on coal seems to be more a display of power than compassion for those seeking electricity, more of an insensitivity to families facing higher utility bills and more of an act of global parity rather than American exceptionalism.

Two thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight coal miners and their families became pawns in this struggle. Why them? Why now?
For generations, coal has been “king” in West Virginia, and our neighbors have a right to question whether business leaders should have more quickly diversified our state’s economy.

There have been pockets of success as exhibited by the High Tech Center in Fairmont, the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown and the ballistics lab in Keyser. Research in medical and energy fields is slowly emerging at WVU, but insufficiently to offset the transformational losses in other industries.

In the end, West Virginia continues to lose population as our children search for jobs elsewhere.

Diversifying our state’s economy while protecting our bedrock industry requires leadership both in Washington and Charleston. For most of my adult life, I have been encouraged to run for governor and initiate that economic renaissance. Recent polls have indicated that if I were to pursue the governorship, I would likely be successful. Pretty tempting.

But there comes a time to put aside our personal aspirations, to double down on resistance to the policies in Washington that are ill-conceived and destructive to our nation’s economy.

The “War on Coal” that led to this recent loss of 2,268 coal mining jobs didn’t originate in Charleston; no, it came from the White House. That’s where the fight is, and that’s where I could serve best.

The tragic loss of 2,268 coal mining jobs made that clear to me. The struggle to save our nation takes place every day in Washington.

President Obama’s term is for another year and a half. He can still do irreparable harm to our struggling economy and especially our fossil fuel industries. What havoc he has wrought on coal is merely a prelude to his next target: natural gas.

President William McKinley once said, “Duty determines destiny.” My duty is to protect West Virginia families from being further victimized by the Obama Administration and the EPA.

It is time for me to focus on the work ahead of us in Congress. These 2,268 coal mining families need an experienced, tested voice in Washington. Someone not afraid to step away from party affiliation, to stand up to the bullying tactics of an administration which can’t grasp the harm its regulations are having on families and businesses.

Our country must never be allowed to turn its back on our coal industry.

Two thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight families deserve better. America deserves better.

--See it in print here--