Last week, the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others opposed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s stricter environmental rules “will be regarded one day in the same way we think of 19th-century apologists for human slavery.” McConnell described the editorial as a “depressing new low.” The Hill,
In a Monday op-ed in the paper, McConnell said the editorial was resorting to “tone-deaf attacks” and “ratcheting up the rhetoric because the law and facts are so clearly against them.”
“Drawing a moral equivalence between America’s original sin of slavery and the fight for Kentucky coal reveals a profound lack of moral seriousness — not to mention a troubling indifference to an industry that keeps this commonwealth and this country running,” he wrote.
McConnell is a leading critic of the Obama administration’s plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and its efforts to reach an international accord on climate change…
“The EPA’s new climate rule is a disaster, and I won’t stand idly by while the administration tries to ram it past my constituents in an illegal or unconstitutional manner. Nor will I stand idly by without defending Kentuckians from lost jobs and higher energy bills,” he wrote Monday.
“No one can predict the verdicts of history, but here’s one thing you can be sure of: I will continue to wage this battle against the EPA on behalf of my constituents, and it’s a fight I intend to win.”
Leave a Reply