The West Virginia Coal Association has blasted the Inflation Resumption Act as a dagger in the heart of Manchin’s own home-state industry. The letter is signed by heads of coal industry groups in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. We count FIVE Democratic senators from these states all of whom favor this bill.
Here is the letter:
This legislation is so egregious, it leaves those of us that call Senator Manchin a friend, shocked and disheartened.
The Schumer-Manchin bill doubles the current tax on coal and subjects mining companies to the highest tax of any other American business effectively costing mining companies tens of millions of dollars in new taxes and adding to the complexities of keeping state fuel and household energy costs stable and competitive. More disturbing, the Schumer-Manchin proposal provides President Biden’s EPA with the clear and unbridled ability and expanded budget to regulate greenhouse gases and state coal assets however they deem appropriate or in the most punitive manner possible.
The language in this proposal has predictably already received a glorious “Thank you Joe” from Biden’s climate Czar John Kerry and current EPA cabinet officials for removing the critical underpinnings of the recent decision victory in West Virginia v. USEPA before the U.S. Supreme Court that was championed by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in June.
Why support anything Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry want for coal? It is incomprehensible why any miner would support the Manchin-Schumer legislation which will not only put an immediate stop to the investment and financing behind our states coal and electric generating assets but forever foreclose on America’s coal industry!
