A coal group is seeking to upend Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s two-day tour of Appalachia that started Monday, saying she is nothing more than President Obama 2.0 when it comes to piling regulations on a struggling coal industry.
“It’s a bold move to stand before the very communities that will be devastated by the policies Secretary Clinton supports continuing and ask that they put their trust in her,” said American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s Laura Sheehan, senior vice president of communications, after Clinton arrived in Kentucky and West Virginia Monday.
“This isn’t even political misdirection,” Sheehan said. “Secretary Clinton has made it very clear that she would be a virtual Obama 2.0, backing regulations that would stunt economic growth and hurt those who can least afford it the most.”
Clinton will be in Kentucky and West Virginia Monday, before wrapping up her “Breaking Down Barriers” tour of Appalachia by traveling north to Ohio to talk about the economy and jobs on Tuesday.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in West Virginia Sunday to soften the ground. He was met by protesters who used comments Hillary Clinton made at a March town hall in Ohio when she said more coal miners would lose their jobs under her presidency. The comments were met by the ire of the coal industry and GOP lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the comments “callous.”
Clinton’s campaign spent a week backtracking on her comments, saying they were misrepresented. She said she would help those in Appalachia recover from job losses in the mining and manufacturing sector with a $30 billion cash injection.
Sheehan hopes the tour will make her rethink proceeding with Obama’s climate regulations that would further inflict job loss on the region while providing no meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, which many scientists blame for heating the Earth’s atmosphere.
“We can only hope that as this election cycle continues and Secretary Clinton meets firsthand with those she proposes to put [out] of work, that she takes a step back and asks herself if the cost of Obama’s illegal carbon regulations, which will have no meaningful effect on global climate change, are worth the risk to everyday hardworking Americans struggling to make ends meet,” Sheehan said.
