“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted…Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

– Barack Obama, community organizer, senator, and then-presidential candidate to an “unexpectedly” nonplussed San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, January, 2008.

“New EPA rules to devastate coal industry.”

Advertisement

– Headline, the Daily Caller, today.

Not surprisingly, the administration is hoping you’re not paying attention, as White House flak catcher Jay Carney tells Jake Tapper of ABC today:

[Voters] do not sit around analyzing The Wall Street Journal or other — or Bloomberg to look at the — you know, analyze the numbers.  Now, maybe some folks do, but not most Americans.  I think that’s the point David Plouffe was making; that’s the point the president was making just moments ago in his statement in the Rose Garden.

Because “The numbers, they are awful.”

And anything but “unexpected.”

Flashback: “I will be held accountable. I’ve got four years. A year from now, people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then this is going to be a one-term proposition.”