The State Of The Union Address according to the Bush regime  must be no more than a one night shut-me-up on issues of importance to the American people. Oil man George Bush made the statement Monday night: "Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.”  Haven't we heard this "oil addiction" malarkey before with absolutely no intentions of changing? Well, less than 24 hours after that statement, Bush’s Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman indicated the White House was pulling the plug on the  FutureGen project, a clean coal plant that was touted as “the cleanest fossil fuel fired power plant in the world.”

From Thinkprogress:

“In 25 years on Capitol Hill, I have never witnessed such a cruel deception,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, hinting at the administration’s political considerations for the project’s demise. “When the city of Mattoon, Illinois, was chosen over possible locations in Texas, the secretary of energy set out to kill FutureGen.”

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Robert Sussman notes that companies and governments around the world have committed to supporting FutureGen. “It would be a blow to future international public-private partnerships if the Bush administration were to allow these commitments to languish,” said Sussman.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that the Illinois lawmakers intend to appeal the decision to President Bush, and that Durbin “might block nominations to fill two key vacancies at the Energy Department.”

UPDATE II: DeSmogBlog and Gristmill have more.

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