THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Hellfire, that's what their corporate masters buy them for and the little boogers aren't about to voluntarily jump off that gravy train.

Coal state lawmakers are attempting to block the Obama administration from limiting the planet-warming emissions of power plants.

Kentucky Republican Rep. Ed Whitfield and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin are pushing a measure that would require congressional approval of President Barack Obama’s signature move to combat climate change.

Whitfield charged at a Thursday hearing that the Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing a “one-two punch to eliminate coal as a source of electricity.”

The EPA recently put out the first-ever limits on greenhouse gases from future power plants. The impact of those regulations is blunted by the fact that they don’t apply to existing plants. Not many new coal-fired plants are being built anymore in the United States.

But a bigger fight will come next year, when the EPA puts out greenhouse gas standards for existing plants. Coal still makes up 37 percent of U.S. electricity generation. In Kentucky, it’s more than 90 percent.

Whitfield and Manchin’s plan would forbid the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing plants unless Congress passes a law agreeing to when the limits would start. Their proposal also would put conditions on the rules for future plants.

Janet McCabe, the EPA’s top air pollution regulator, said at Thursday’s hearing that her agency has serious issues with the lawmakers’ draft legislation. It would hurt the fight against climate change, she said.

“Power plants are clearly the largest source of carbon in the country,” said McCabe.

Paying to clean up their act would be a real black eye for them on Wall St. as well as cut into their bonuses. So instead of spending money on cleanup, it all goes into congressional pockets and lobbying firms and lawyers when they have to sue. And in the end it costs twice as much to get to the same place.