Texas Sen. Ted Cruz promised to end the Obama administration’s “war on coal” as president, while on the trail in Pennsylvania.
Cruz’s Pennsylvania-specific pitch included a focus on undoing Obama administration regulations on the energy industry. The senator argued that Obama’s promise to bankrupt coal plants “may well be the only campaign promise he’s come close to keeping.”
“The ‘war on coal’ is destroying jobs in Pennsylvania and all across the country,” Cruz said in Williamsport. “The war on coal is wrong. It is immoral for American citizens, American families to have their federal government trying to drive them out of business. And if I am elected president, the war on coal will end, the so-called Clean Power Plan will be rescinded.”
Cruz said his presidency would bring “thousands of thousands of thousands of new jobs in coal,” and pledged to bring higher wages for workers while also driving the cost of electricity down.
He continued to tout America’s natural gas industry and said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants to use “New York rules” to “end the jobs in oil and gas in the state of Pennsylvania.”
“If I’m elected president, the federal government will have no authority whatsoever over fracking,” Cruz said. “We’ve been doing fracking in America for over 60 years. It is perfectly safe and the states now exactly how to do it to generate jobs.”
Cruz has three public events scheduled in the Keystone State on Friday and will campaign in Scranton and Allentown. Republicans will vote in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday.
