Senate Addresses Planned Parenthood Funding | War on Coal Heats Up - High Costs For Americans

Obama's National Energy Tax

Today in Washington, D.C. - Aug. 3, 2015
U.S. House not in session; they are on their August recess clearly labeled District Work Weeks on the U.S House calendar. Suggest readers contact YOUR Congressman and tell him/her what you are concerned about. Your Senators will soon be in their home states, unless they hide out their second homes in VA as some have done in prior years.

The Senate will reconvene at 2 PM today and resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1881, the bill to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect the money to women’s health programs.

At 5:30 PM, the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to (i.e. whether to take up and debate) S. 1881.

For those who have not viewed the videos of Planned Parenthood "doctors" / employees reveling in their efforts of aborting "killing babies (fetuses)" in ways to secure and sell baby body parts, it is gruesome. The latest released video identified that some babies are born live and were then left to die (which is infanticide) and then were sold. It is doubtful that the Obama administration will take legal action against these illegal barbaric tactics used to harvest and sell baby body parts by Planned Parenthood. Thus the Senate is at least addressing via S.1881 the stopping of providing Federal funds to Planned Parenthood and redirecting the same funds to other women's health programs.

THE WAR ON COAL IS A WAR ON CONSUMERS
The Hill reports, “The Obama administration on Sunday unveiled a tougher climate change rule for power plants, demanding that generators cut their carbon dioxide output 32 percent in the first-ever limits on the pollutant.

“The historic regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency is the main pillar of President Obama’s climate agenda. It is the biggest piece of his drive to create a legacy and go down in history as the first United States president to take comprehensive action against climate change by cutting emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

“Obama will hold an event Monday afternoon at the White House to announce the regulation, the White House said.

“The EPA is asking states to formulate plans to reach specific carbon reduction goals assigned to them by 2030, from a 2005 starting point, adding up to a 32 percent reduction nationwide. If the states do not submit plans — as multiple conservative states have threatened — the EPA will write and impose its own strategies upon them.”

Just like the nuclear deal with Iran, this EPA power grab is another effort by the president to burnish his legacy without approval from Congress, the consequences of which will be left to President Obama’s successor to sort out.

The AP notes, “Opponents said they would sue the government immediately. They also planned to ask the courts to put the rule on hold while legal challenges play out. . . . Even before the rule was finalized, more than a dozen states announced plans to fight it. At the urging of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, some Republican governors have declared they'll simply refuse to comply, setting up a certain confrontation with the EPA, which by law can force its own plan on states that fail to submit implementation plans.”

This rule, authorized only by the Obama EPA, not Congress, will be costly to families and businesses.

The AP gets right to the point in a story discussing “Who wins and loses under Obama's stricter power plant limits”: “LOSERS: - YOUR POWER BILL . . .  The National Association of Manufacturers, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the National Mining Association, the American Energy Alliance and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association all predicted the rule would drive electricity bills up.”

In a similar piece, National Journal confirms “The coal industry” will be among the “LOSERS,” writing that the regulation “is likely to trigger even more coal-plant shutdowns” and “could deal a major blow to the industry. An analysis from the Energy Information Administration, the federal government's stat shop, predicted that coal-power production would decrease by 32 percent by 2030 as a result of the draft rule.”

8.8 billion annually by 2030 . . . .”

Of course, this rule has long been in the works in an administration that has targeted coal from the beginning, with little regard to family electric bills or those who work in the coal industry. A White House climate advisor once declared that “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” When Obama was running for president in 2008, he admitted, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . . [It] will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.” He added, “So if somebody wants to build a coal fired plant they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum . . . .”

As Fox News reported last year, “[I]n coal country, the changes have meant layoffs. Nowhere has been hit harder than eastern Kentucky, where more than 6,000 miners have lost their jobs since January 2012. For each mining job, there are estimated to be at least three directly related jobs, like trucking, that also disappear.”

Frustrated coal miners say things like, “Our biggest worries now are just trying to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, telling your family that this was all caused by the EPA, directed by our President for his political agenda.” And, “you just never know from day to day if you are going to have a job or not.”

As Leader McConnell told EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a committee hearing in April, “Your agency’s proposed budget request, if approved, would facilitate the EPA’s plan to shutter coal plants in my state and put countless more of my constituents out of work—all at the service of a regulatory agenda. The actual benefits of which neither you or anyone else can seem to explain.

“My constituents want their dignity restored. They want to be able to work and they want to be able to provide for their families. You cannot guarantee your carbon regulations won’t cost my constituents jobs. You cannot guarantee your carbon regulations won’t raise their utility bills.”

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