McCaskill stops at Cape Girardeau business on energy tour

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill's stop in Cape Girardeau on Friday as part of a statewide tour covered her support for extending funding of highway infrastructure and discussion of energy production.

McCaskill toured the facilities of Delta Concrete Companies, where she said she saw a process in place that shows how companies can be responsible with large energy consumption and see a benefit.

"What this company has done that many companies haven't done as much of is they've figured out ways to be environmentally responsible when it makes sense for them in terms of their profit margin," McCaskill said, pointing to the company's material recycling processes.

The Democratic senator kicked off her tour Thursday with a visit to an electric cooperative in New London, Mo. She will be touring power plants across Missouri this month as part of what she is billing as her "Hometown Energy Tour," where she plans to discuss her support for national energy policies that she said are "practical, accessible and affordable" and don't penalize states like Missouri that largely rely on coal to generate electricity.

Missouri Republicans were quick to attack McCaskill's attention to energy policies Friday, with the offices of Republican Senate candidate John Brunner and the Missouri Republican Party sending news releases stating McCaskill's voting record does not match energy policies that work for businesses and individuals.

"Senator McCaskill has a record of saying one thing in Missouri and voting a different way in Washington when it comes to issues on cap-and-trade and issues on the utilization of coal to produce power," said Lloyd Smith, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party.

Smith said it's ironic to Republicans that McCaskill is traveling the state talking about how to save money on energy when she did not vote against allowing the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule to go forward, which according to a recent article in the Sikeston Standard Democrat could cause a 33 percent increase in electricity rates for Sikeston Board of Municipal Utilities customers.

"Cap-and-trade was not a good idea," McCaskill said Friday. "I was not in favor of cap-and-trade because the technology was not affordable enough, which meant that for people in Missouri, that are 85 percent coal-dependent, people on fixed incomes weren't going to be able to pay their utility bills. So we've got to go carefully here. I'm somebody who really believes that while I want to clean up the environment and I want to make sure we address global warming, that we don't do it in a way that hurts the pocketbook of people that are working as hard as they can to make their bills come out at the end of the month."

She said she supports development of alternative renewable forms of energy and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.

The state GOP also announced Friday that its party's Senate candidates vying for the chance to unseat McCaskill will participate in a forum at next month's Lincoln Day gathering in Kansas City.

eragan@semissourian.com

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