Hillary Clinton’s proposal for $30 billion in aid for people suffering from the decline of the coal industry drew a mixed-to-hostile response Thursday from critics of President Barack Obama’s environmental policies — raising doubts about whether she can arrest the Democratic Party’s electoral slide in coal country.

The package her campaign outlined includes billions of dollars to shore up coal workers’ pension benefits and retrain out-of-work miners or power plant employees to find jobs in other industries. It also includes spending on the so-far-elusive goal of developing “clean coal” technology that would capture and store coal-burning plants’ greenhouse gas pollution.

The plan, which is similar to proposals from Obama, is meant to help coal-dependent communities navigate the transition toward economies based on cleaner energy sources — something that could have an impact in key 2016 states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado. But industry supporters said it hardly makes up for Clinton’s championing of Obama climate and environmental policies that have helped spur the closings of dozens of coal plants across the country.

“It’s made-for-campaign rhetoric,” National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich said. “The administration has systemically eviscerated a high-wage industry, coal … and then offers welfare money. And rather than see opportunity to distance herself, she now appears to embrace those policies.”

Ed Yankovich, the United Mine Workers vice president for the district covering Pennsylvania and the Northeast, said it's too early to say whether the plan might help Clinton with Democrats those areas, since Obama’s actions have alienated those who work in the industry from Democrats in general.

“People look at these folks and say, 'they’ve completely abandoned us, it’s like we don’t live in America.' There’s a distinct bitterness about it,” he said.

"If you were a Democrat running for town supervisor, they’d treat it like you and Barack Obama were making decisions together,” Yankovich said. “The question is whether Hillary Clinton can do something to assuage that and [have them] say, 'You do care for us.'”

But former three-decade Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher, who lost his seat in coal-heavy southwestern Virginia in 2010’s tea party tidal wave, was hopeful that proposals like Clinton’s could help the ailing region.

“Anything Democrats can do to express support for addressing the problems that have arisen in the mining communities given the rapid movement away from coal over the course of the last two to three years is politically helpful and substantively appropriate,” Boucher said. “What she is recommending I think is on target in terms of what is needed.”

The plan also “gives her good things to talk about, highly relevant things to talk about,” whenever she visits coal-producing regions, he added.

More than one in five coal-related jobs have disappeared during Obama’s presidency, and several major U.S. coal mining companies have announced this year that they would or may soon seek bankruptcy protection. That downturn has many causes, including competition from cheap, abundant natural gas, but another factor has been the effort by the administration to shift the U.S. away from its traditionally heavy reliance on coal, the fossil fuel with the heaviest impact on the Earth’s climate.

Clinton’s proposals includes money for retraining coal miners to work in other industries. But the other jobs those miners might be able to get in their communities typically pay far less, said Abby Foster, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, an industry group. The group’s members have generally opposed retraining programs like that, she added.

“We do not want federal money to fund training for new jobs that pay half of our current salaries,” John Stilley, the president of Amerikohl Mining in Butler, Pa., testified at a state government hearing last month. “We want fair regulations so investors will continue to fund research and development.”

Obama’s environmental policies — as well as Obamacare and his stances on social issues like guns — have made the president so politically toxic that a convicted felon defeated him in parts of coal-dependent West Virginia in the 2012 primary. Just this month, Democrats suffered an unexpected defeat in the governor’s race in another coal state, Kentucky.

The GOP made it clear Thursday that it’s not letting Clinton off the hook for backing Obama’s climate policies.

“Hillary Clinton is Public Enemy No. 1 for coal miners and their communities because she wholeheartedly supports President Obama’s EPA agenda that is crippling their way of life," RNC spokesman Michael Short said Thursday. "If Hillary Clinton were truly on the side of coal country, she would stand up to extreme anti-energy environmentalists that run the Democrat Party instead of embracing their agenda that is killing jobs and driving up costs.”

The plan comes as Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, her top challenger in the Democratic presidential primary, have both vied to win the support of the party's liberal green wing with aggressive policies to confront climate change. And they acknowledge that doing so will require dramatic cuts in coal consumption of coal.

"Hillary Clinton is committed to meeting the climate change challenge as President and making the United States a clean energy superpower," the six-page plan says. "At the same time, she will not allow coal communities to be left behind — or left out of our economic future."

Clinton's fact-sheet does not offer an itemized breakdown of the spending, and many of the proposals would need approval from Congress, where Republicans have so far balked at Obama's request for $10 billion in aid for coalfield communities.

Several major U.S. coal mining companies have announced this year that they would or may soon seek bankruptcy protection, including Arch Coal, Patriot Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Walter Energy and James River Coal. The Obama administration last month announced $14.5 million in grants to help coal communities diversify their economies.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune praised the plan, which he said would help coal communities cope with a transition that already is underway.

"Clean energy, including wind, solar and energy efficiency, is already creating more jobs than fossil fuels — and that pace is only going to accelerate," Brune said in a statement. "It’s essential that all regions and communities, especially those who have helped power this country, experience the benefits of our transition to clean energy and aren’t unfairly burdened."

Clinton's plan draws from several ideas already circulating on Capitol Hill, such as bipartisan pension-protection legislation from West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania senators to protect coal miner pensions. Clinton would expand that to include retirees from power plants or transportation companies who lose benefits due to a coal market-related bankruptcy. And she endorses “sweeping reforms” proposedby Virginia and Pennsylvania Democrats for the federal black lung benefit program.

Her plan also would create a Secure Coal Community Schools program — similar to the existing Secure Rural Schools program to offset lost revenue from a decline in Western timber sales — that would replace lost coal-industry revenue to public schools “until alternative sources of local tax revenue arise through economic growth.”

Clinton outlines goals to modernize infrastructure, repurpose mines and power plant sites, increase high-speed broadband access and expedite permitting for renewable energy projects and transmission lines. She also would offer more tax credits for low-income residents, allow companies investing in coalfield communities to avoid capital gains taxes and establish a competitive grant program.

Carbon capture and sequestration research and development would receive more support under Clinton's plan. The technology has already received substantial federal support, but remains expensive and has struggled to gain widespread adoption.

Clinton had already teased her coal community strategy back in July when she released a set of clean power goals that would build on the Obama administration's strategy. It also partially hit goals touted by billionaire climate activist and donor Tom Steyer and earned her the endorsement of the League of Conservation Voters.

But Sanders has earned plaudits for pushing Clinton to the left, including in opposing the Keystone XL pipeline and Arctic drilling. His stance on stopping fossil fuel production on federal property goes further than Clinton has advocated and the longtime Vermont senator is promising to detail an aggressive climate platform that also goes further than a bill he offered in 2013 to enact a carbon tax. Sanders has also promised to propose a plan to provide education and training programs for coal workers.