TCS Statement on the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
Hearing Entitled: "National Energy Policy: Coal”
Washington, D.C. - Written
statement by Cena Swisher, Program Director at Taxpayers
for Common Sense, on the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
hearing entitled: "National Energy Policy: Coal”:
We
applaud the subcommittee’s efforts to define a road
map for U.S. energy policy. According to the Committee Members,
central to this national policy is throwing billions of
dollars at the Clean Coal Technology Program (CCTP).
The
ineffectiveness of the Clean Coal program has been a major
failure of the Federal government. Fifteen years and billions
of dollars since its inception, the Clean Coal Program has
proven ineffective. In fact, the General Accounting Office
considers the CCTP to be of the most mismanaged programs
at the Department of Energy (DOE).
Proposed
tax breaks and subsidies to the coal industry total about
$4 billion. Taxpayers should not be forced to shovel their
hard-earned money at a program that doesn’t work.
Clean
Coal Technology is about lining King Coal’s pockets.
It has very little to do national energy policy or environmental
conservation.
The
coal industry should get their hands out of the American
taxpayer’s pockets and start paying it’s own way.
Otherwise, billions of taxpayer dollars will go up in smoke.
