HARRISBURG — Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said Friday that he is seeking passage of a measure that's squarely aimed at several Democratic presidential candidates and designed to prevent a president from banning hydraulic fracturing.

At a news conference in Harrisburg, Toomey said his newly introduced resolution makes it clear that Congress believes that a president doesn't have the authority to ban hydraulic fracturing, called fracking for short.

The resolution, should it pass, would be a bulwark in a legal fight against a president who tries to use the levers of executive branch power to ban the natural gas extraction process.

“What I'm trying to do is put a spotlight and encourage senators and House members to underscore that the president does not have the legal authority to do this and that would then contribute to forming the basis for a very, very aggressive pushback if a future president were to attempt to exercise powers that he or she doesn't legally have,” Toomey said.

Toomey's resolution is in response to an all-out prohibition that's backed by two leading Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The prospect of banning fracking is dividing Democrats and their traditional allies in organized labor in what's shaping up as a premier battleground state in next year's presidential election.

Pennsylvania is also the nation's No. 2 natural gas state, behind Texas. While Pennsylvania's leading Democrats have run campaigns that beat up on the state's booming natural gas industry, none have said that they would flat-out ban it. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has even backed new pipeline construction, saying that the industry needs a distribution system.