A New York Times story by Coral Davenport picked up on an Op-Ed piece Mitch McConnell ran in the Lexington Herald-Reader calling on the states to ignore Federal regulations meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The piece, titled "States should reject Obama mandate for clean-power regulations" starts out:
The Obama administration's so-called "clean power" regulation seeks to shut down more of America's power generation under the guise of protecting the climate.
In reality, this proposed regulation would have a negligible effect on global climate but a profoundly negative impact on countless American families already struggling.
The regulation is unfair. It's probably illegal. And state officials can do something about it; in fact, many are already fighting back.
Read
the rest of it if you want to see fossil fuel industry/Republican spin on this. The standard talking points are there, including calling this an attack on the middle class. McConnell pretty much promises that this will be overturned in the courts (the Coal industry has multiple lawsuits going). He frames the actions by the EPA as more high-handed decrees from Obama, completely omitting the inconvenient fact that the authority for the actions to issue these regulations has been confirmed by the Supreme Court.
As per the Times,
Democrats said that Mr. McConnell’s call for states not to prepare plans appears unprecedented. Under the terms of the Clean Air Act, the executive branch is required to issue the carbon pollution rules. The Supreme Court has upheld that requirement.
“It’s unprecedented that a leader in the Senate would call on states to disobey the law, which has been upheld many times by the Supreme Court,” said Senator Barbara Boxer of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee. “I can’t recall a majority leader calling on states to disobey the law — and I’ve been here almost 24 years,” she said.
emphasis added
To put not too fine a point on this, while McConnell claims to be looking out for the poor, the elderly, the middle class, he's essentially whoring himself out for the coal industry. Further, he has no problem with undermining the rule of law and sabotaging the very Federal Government in which he serves, or deliberately blocking actions to deal with Climate Change.
And these guys are constantly telling us Obama is breaking the law and destroying the country? They keep waving the Constitution in our faces?
As Sean Hannity would say, "Unbelievable!"