Published: October 23, 2018 |

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For years, Democrat politicians told us that the coal industry was dying.

It was only because they were the ones trying to kill it.

Some Democrats told us that rebuilding the American coal industry was impossible. Others bragged that they’d do everything in their power to help destroy it. In 2016, Hillary Clinton said that “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Then-President Obama said that similar jobs “are just not going to come back.”

The tombstone for the American coal industry was packaged and ready for delivery.

But as Mark Twain famously said, “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Such is the case today for the coal industry — thanks to President Trump.

From the start of his campaign for president, Donald Trump pledged to bring coal back to life. This was an especially big deal for the people of Eastern Ohio. It’s one reason he won Belmont County by nearly 42 points. And a year and a half into the Trump administration, the results are in — miners are returning to work throughout the Ohio Valley region.

In fact, Trump has brought 100,000 mining jobs back from extinction since he took office. Just last month, mining employment increased by 6,000 — a trend that isn’t stopping anytime soon.

This isn’t just great news for miners — it’s great news for all Ohioans. As of April, coal was Ohio’s largest source of electricity generation, and the second largest source of energy production.

Trump has implemented bold and aggressive policies to save the industry from the premature burial the Democrats had planned.

The president has removed the U.S. from the disastrous Paris Climate Accord, signed an executive order reversing a ban on leasing federal land to coal companies, and most recently gave states broad authority to determine how to restrict carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The latter is an antidote to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which sought to accelerate the closure of coal-burning power plants by effectively giving the federal government the authority to shut them down at will.

By sending the regulations back to the states, Trump is downsizing the burdensome federal bureaucracy and giving control back to local governments.

Murray Energy, one of the largest coal companies in the country, is based in St. Clairsville. Its CEO, Robert Murray, was a vocal opponent of President Obama’s coal-related regulations, and said scrapping such regulations has saved tens of thousands of coal mining jobs.

“(President Trump’s) already saved 25,000 coal mining jobs alone on his clean power plan overturn, on top of the 46,700 jobs in mining that he’s restored. That saves 25,000 jobs on top of the 63,000 that the Sierra Club, Silicon Valley, Democrats, liberal elites and the media destroyed under eight years under Obama,” Murray told Fox Business last year.

The livelihoods of millions of Americans depend on the coal industry. Mindlessly pulling the rug out from beneath them is not only misguided policy, it’s flat out wrong. It’s also exactly what the Democrats want to do.

That’s why we need to send strong leaders like Congressman Jim Renacci to Washington — to work with Trump to keep the coal recovery coming and stop the Democrats from closing down every last coal mine in the country.

People like Sen. Sherrod Brown are not on the same team as Trump and Renacci. In 2009, when Brown voted against protecting coal mining jobs, he showed his true colors as someone who cares more about pleasing the higher-ups in Washington than doing what’s best for the folks back home in Ohio.

Thankfully, Trump is putting America’s forgotten men and women back to work, and he’s returned to America’s miners the future that Democrats have tried so hard to destroy.

When voters in Eastern Ohio get out and vote this fall, they must vote against the dysfunction the Democrats represent and in favor of continuing the rescue mission of the coal industry that Donald Trump began.

Source: Herald-Star

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