Rep. Gosar Continues Fight For Commonsense All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy and Against Obama's Flurry of Job Killing Regulations

Statement

Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement after participating in multiple committee hearings including one in the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals Subcommittee and one in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Interior focusing on restrictive new regulations proposed by the Obama Administration that will harm domestic coal production:

"The endless assault by the Obama Administration on domestic coal is unprecedented and puts the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk. The president's reckless obsession to enact his partisan environmental agenda clashes with scientific facts as well as the reality of the economic consequences his disastrous proposals are having on the country.

"The Office of Natural Resources Revenue's (ONRR) proposed rule is a bureaucratic nightmare that will make it impossible to produce coal on federal lands, including tribal land. If implemented, this fundamentally flawed new regulation will kill jobs, result in an unconstitutional tax on coal exports and bankrupt even more American energy companies.

"The Department of the Interior's new stream buffer zone rule is even more troubling and will negatively affect both surface and underground coal mines. This terrible new regulation is projected to sterilize between 27% and 64% of recoverable reserves. The associated decline in annual coal production will have a direct impact on employment and risks killing between 112,757 and 280,809 mining-related jobs.

"Congress must block the Obama Administration's overreaching new regulations utilizing the power of the purse in the end of the year funding bill. Arizonans simply can't afford the president's far-left agenda and we must put an end to this nonsensical war on coal."

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