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McCaskill joins Obama on energy

January 17, 2012

by David Cole, Chairman, Missouri Republican Party
Springfield News-Leader
January 16, 2012
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120116/OPINIONS01/301160020/-1/7daysarchives/McCaskill-joins-Obama-energy

Missourians are tired of politicians who say one thing and do another — and Claire McCaskill is one of the worst offenders.

So when McCaskill arrived in Springfield recently to speak about the importance of keeping energy rates affordable, we just had to take a closer look.

As it turns out, McCaskill’s statewide tour on energy is nothing more than an election year gimmick to cover up her longtime support for the president’s job-killing policies. The truth is, Claire McCaskill is a foot soldier in Barack Obama’s war on energy.

In 2008, McCaskill told the St. Joseph News-Press that she is “supportive of a cap-and-trade system to help address the world’s climate change problems.” Then she voted for a nationwide system to cap carbon dioxide emissions – a proposal that Republicans, thankfully, were able to defeat.

But the legislation’s defeat didn’t dampen McCaskill’s enthusiasm. Just a few months later, she was caught on camera bragging that the bill nearly passed the Senate and assuring her audience “we’ll get there.”

Once liberals realized that cap-and-trade would never become law, Democrats devised an audacious new strategy to force their plan on the country. Instead of holding an up-or-down vote on the legislation, Barack Obama decided that he would simply order the EPA to implement a backdoor cap-and-trade system over the clear objections of the public. On two occasions, McCaskill was given to opportunity to vote against Obama’s power grab, but both times, she voted to allow the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide.

Creating regulations in a backdoor manner without the approval of Congress is a fundamental threat to our system of representative democracy, but sadly, it has become the preferred tactic of Claire McCaskill and Barack Obama.

Now, thanks to McCaskill, the EPA is out of control.

In fact, on the same day that McCaskill spoke elsewhere in the state, the local newspaper published a story about the devastating impact that new federal EPA regulations will have on the community’s relatively-new power plant.

The article noted that residents currently enjoy some of the most inexpensive electricity rates in the nation — but all that would change when the Obama-McCaskill regulations take effect.

But what Claire McCaskill hasn’t mentioned during any of her speeches is the fact that she voted to allow the very same regulations that are currently threatening to shut down the power plant and cause local electricity prices to skyrocket. And this is exactly the problem.

McCaskill votes like a liberal in Washington, supporting things like cap-and-trade and onerous EPA regulations; then she comes to Missouri and tries to fool voters into believing she’s concerned about affordable energy. But she won’t get away with it this time.

As McCaskill said during her 2006 campaign: “If my walk doesn’t match my talk, then shame on me and never vote for me again.”

It’s time for McCaskill to drop the charade and explain her consistent support for Barack Obama’s job-killing energy policies. The families of Missouri deserve the truth.