It's not just residents of coal-producing states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, North Dakota, Montana, and Colorado who ought to be concerned about Barack Obama's threat to destroy the coal industry. His radical plan will, by his own admission, cause electricity prices across the country to "skyrocket." Are you ready for that? Is our economy ready?
Investor's Business Daily outlined what's at stake:
Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle on Jan. 17, Barack Obama singled out new coal plant construction for big taxes. The scheme, part of the cap-and-trade energy policy he wants to implement as president, is meant to tax coal producers straight out of business.
"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can," Obama said. "It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Isolated gaffe? No. On his own Web site, Obama declares:
"Once we make dirty energy expensive, the second step in my plan is to invest $150 billion over the next decade to ensure the development and deployment of clean, affordable energy."
In other words, Obama's plan is confiscatory taxes to first destroy America's domestic energy producers, and once that bridge is burned, force the U.S. to rely on alternative energies that haven't been developed. The big-government plan might make ideologues happy, but in the real world, it won't work. …
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America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with the world's largest demonstrated reserve base of 489 billion short tons, the Energy Department says. About 93% of it is used to produce electricity, and it provides about half of U.S. electricity needs. As the nation's economy expands, that need for coal is projected to grow about 20% by 2030.
If that need can't be met, consumers will be hit with high prices brought on by shortages. Meanwhile, America's 80,000 miners and 1.6 million workers in coal-related and coal-dependent industries would suffer from Obama's taxes on new plants.
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system," Obama said in another interview, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." He added that because "I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to the consumers."
The biggest problem with Obama's plan is that it taxes productive companies, and offers nothing but "hope" to replace the missing energy. He does not propose using our current resources as a bridge to cleaner energy. He'd rather stop their use cold. No nuclear power, no offshore drilling, no new coal plants, and if consumers have to pay more, too bad. Obama's attack on coal use surely will leave us poorer.
And that's only one of the hundreds of Obama plans to "fundamentally transform" this country that will make us all poorer. He's not going to redistribute wealth so much as he's going to redistribute misery. There will be lots more of that for everyone.
