Mike Pence: Trump Will End ‘The War On Coal’

Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence promised at an August 8 campaign stop in Iowa that if his running mate, Donald Trump, becomes president, the administration will work with the coal industry and stop working to decrease its production.

“Donald Trump is going to end the war on coal on Day 1 of his administration,” Pence told a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa, according to the Hill. “We’re going to free up coal production in this country for the American people.”

The Indiana governor went on to say that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton plans to reduce the production and use of fossil fuels, while a Trump administration would utilize an “all-of-the-above energy strategy.”

“While [Trump has] led a global business and built skyscrapers to the clouds, he’s done it shoulder-to-shoulder with the men who have done the work,” he said.

According to Pence, Trump’s dedication to and respect for blue-collar voters takes precedence as he crafts his approach toward economic issues.

“He’s spent as much time talking to the people grooming the lawns and laying the bricks as he has to other CEOs,” Pence added.

He went on to say that Trump’s economic proposals will update the nation’s infrastructure, which he said was long outdated.

“In America we do three things particularly well: we make things, we grow things and we move things,” he explained. “We’ve got to continue to invest in our infrastructure in this country.”

Pence has a well-established history as a coal advocate – in 2014, the governor overturned a Republican-enacted energy efficiency program in his state, saying that it would cost too much for local manufacturers, notes Reuters. And in 2015, he wrote a letter to President Barack Obama saying that Indiana, the eighth-largest coal producer in the country, would not comply with the president’s Clean Power Plan by regulating power plant emissions. Pence has also said in the past the climate change is not “a resolved issue in science today,” and that “we haven’t seen a lot of warming lately,” citing concerns over “the coming ice age” in the 1970s, according to MSNBC.

“This is really a very simple choice,” Pence said of the November election at the Iowa rally, according to the Hill. “It’s a choice between change and the status quo. At the very moment America is crying out for something different, the other party has nominated the most familiar of names with a stale agenda.”

Sources: The Hill, Reuters, MSNBC / Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr