Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Obama’s “reckless” plan to address climate change over the weekend, just as the U.S. began high-level clean energy talks in Paris.
“It would obviously be irresponsible for an outgoing president to purport to sign the American people up to international commitments based on a domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, that Congress has voted to reject and that his successor could do away with in a few months’ time,” McConnell wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “But that’s just what President Obama is proposing to do.”
The Kentucky Republican argued the clean energy taxes Obama has unsuccessfully attempted to pass through Congress would hurt the middle class.
“While the president has tried his best to dress this ideological attack on the middle class as ‘climate policy,’ in reality it could increase emissions by offshoring American manufacturing to countries that lack our environmental standards,” McConnell noted.
He said the proposed energy standards could eliminate as many as 250,000 jobs.
The majority leader argued it doesn’t “make much sense to ask Congress to allocate resources for global commitments” based on a plan Obama imposed against the will of Congress.
McConnell suggested the president’s climate push is tied to his concern for his presidential legacy.
“If Obama thinks it’s okay to push a power plan that threatens working families for the benefit of, at best, a carbon rounding error, then he should say so,” he said. “But Congress and more than half of the states have already made clear that he won’t be speaking for us.”
