Saturday Rep. Steve Daines (R-MT) used the Republican weekly address to call out President Barack Obama for his “war on coal.”

Daines is running against Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) who earlier this week was accused of plagiarizing a large portion of his thesis at the United States Army War College.

The Montana lawmaker said Obama’s “job killing regulations on the industries that hold the most hope for our economic future” means that “President Obama is waging a war on the middle class, and Harry Reid’s Senate is fully complicit and eager to carry out the President’s job-killing agenda.”

Earlier this year the EPA released regulations that mandate states cut carbon emissions from existing power plants 30 percent in the next fifteen years, which will cost the U.S. economy an estimated $51 billion per year.

Daines said, “President Obama has spearheaded a war on American energy that not only stands in the way of the potential—it works to reverse it.”

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