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West Virginia delegation seeks more support for coal

Members of West Virginia's Congressional delegation said Wednesday they had mixed reactions to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, but the majority of them had issue with the one word the president did not utter during his address: Coal.

The president talked about his adminstration's work on climate change, and he referred to $4 billion a year in tax breaks to fossil fuel industries "that don't need it," and local representatives, including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said the president didn't address what they were hoping to hear.

"The fact that he didn't even mention coal is unconscionable," Manchin said during a conference call with West Virginia press Wednesday. "I didn't hear him talk about how we can use the fuels we have in this country for cleaner energy. He did recognize that we have cleaned our environment more than any other country, and our environment is cleaner that it has been before because of advances in the last two decades. I would think he would take the next step in building on that."

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said he was supportive of the president's call to invest more in the United States, but he was concerned about the president's non-coal agenda.

"I support calls for investing more in our own nation -- in roads and bridges, education, research and the modern water systems we so obviously need," Rahall said. "But, tonight's State of the Union Address was a mixed bag. I depart completely from this administration when it crafts an energy agenda that sidelines coal and when the White House circumvents Congress to impose its own agenda."

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va, said she thought the president's message was divisive.

"West Virginians want to work, and they expect Washington to implement policies that will create jobs and grow our economy," she said. "Instead of working to unite our country, to revitalize our economy and to restore confidence, the president has focused on promoting what divides us."

Even though they were divided as to how to do it, like Capito mentioned, each member of the delegation supported the president's goal to address income inequality in the country, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., noted.

"Creating a better life for our children -- reducing income inequality and providing opportunities -- is profoundly personal to me," Rockefeller said. "It has, in many ways, been my life's work and calling, something that stirred within me during my early days as a VISTA worker in southern West Virginia in the 1960s. My moral compass was truly set in that tiny coal community of Emmons, and it has guided my work ever since. Much of the president's State of the Union address tonight focused on issues that are at the heart of my nearly 50-year career in public service, issues that are as important today as they were when I first came to West Virginia."

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, who also is seeking the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated by Rockefeller, said the president's policies on energy hurts opportunities and threatens West Virginia jobs.

"If the president wants to promote opportunity, he needs to rethink his energy policies," Tennant said. "The president is wrong on coal, and I will fight him or anyone else who wants to take our coal jobs."

State Sen. Evan Jenkins, R-Cabell, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives, District 3, said Tuesday evening that the president's strategy is one that will create a losing scenario for West Virginia.

"For all the miners who have been out of work because the EPA has all but shut down the permitting process for coal mining, it was a slap in the face to hear the president say he would expedite the permitting process to develop other energy sources," Jenkins said. "While he feigns support for an all-of-the-above energy strategy, his policy agenda makes clear he will continue picking winners and losers."
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Source: The Herald Dispatch