[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 27 (Thursday, February 10, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S638-S639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I really believe you can tell a lot 
about an administration's priorities based on the people that they put 
in place in each location. And that is true for every administration.
  There are more than 300 million Americans. Many of them are 
passionate about serving our Nation. We have many great Federal 
employees who spend their entire life serving our Nation. So there are 
a lot of individuals to be able to choose from to be able to put in 
different administration roles, but their background tells you a lot 
about what the priority is and the purpose is.
  For instance, I would say Xavier Becerra, who is leading HHS, who has 
no healthcare background at all, who is an attorney now leading our 
Nation's healthcare focus--the major issue for him: He was the most 
vocal proponent of abortion while he was in Congress. While he was 
attorney general in California, he was an activist pushing abortion in 
every single country--even suing other States when they limited 
abortion as the attorney general of California.
  He was an activist about abortion. He would increase abortions in 
America. That was a major reason he was put in that spot with HHS. Why 
else would you put an activist attorney leading our Nation's healthcare 
area?
  You can say the same thing with some of the major nominations that 
have come in for DOJ: Kristen Clarke, Vanita Gupta. Both of them are 
outspoken proponents of the ``defund the police'' movement, and now 
they are actually in the Department of Justice.
  Kristen Clarke wrote: ``We must invest less in police and more in 
social workers.'' She also wrote: ``We must invest less in police'' and 
more in social supports for our schools; less in police, more in mental 
health aid. It was the main focus of the ``defund the police'' movement 
that she continued to be able to drive in her op-eds and her writings. 
That is why she was selected, clearly, to go to the Department of 
Justice.
  Vanita Gupta did the same thing. She said: It is ``critical for state 
and local leaders to . . . decrease police budgets and the scope, role, 
and responsibility of police in our lives.''
  There is a reason she is selected to be able to be in that spot. It 
matches with the priorities and values of the administration.
  It is the same thing when you look at Defense. In national Defense, 
Alexandra Baker, when she was put to be Under Secretary of Defense, she 
said she is outspoken in beliefs that climate change is the leading 
national security challenge that we face--the leading national security 
challenge. I am sure the folks in Russia and Ukraine would be glad to 
be able to hear that our leading challenge currently is climate change 
in the Department of Defense.
  Listen, these are all sets of priorities when you look at them and 
you look at the different individuals, and it is the same when we look 
at what is happening right now with Ms. Sarah Bloom Raskin being 
nominated to be the Vice Chair of Supervision at the Federal Reserve. 
This is no just ordinary position. The Vice Chair of Supervision of the 
Federal Reserve will have an immense amount of regulatory and 
supervisory power to push her agenda and to control many aspects of the 
Federal economy.
  She is in lockstep with President Biden's agenda to take on fossil 
fuels. The problem is, the direction that she is trying to lead the 
Federal Reserve is to be able to engage in picking winners and losers, 
not just from a policy aspect but from a capital aspect, from the 
Federal Reserve.
  This is not something I am just writing in to be able to say. This is 
something she stated over and over and over again--that the Federal 
Reserve should be able to reach in and to be able to make it more 
difficult to get capital for anyone who handles fossil fuels.
  Why is that important to us? Well, because 70 percent of the energy 
in the United States is fossil-fuel related. So what happens if, 
suddenly, it gets harder to be able to do natural gas investment, it 
gets harder to do oil investment in the United States?
  Well, two things happen with that. It is pretty straightforward. We 
import more energy, and the prices go up. That is what happens, because 
we are not going to have a decreasing amount in the foreseeable future. 
That is not just me saying that. That is President Biden's U.S. Energy 
Information Administration.
  If you look at the charts and details that they put out about what is 
going to happen for oil and natural gas usage, they would forecast all 
the way up to 2050 that it is going to be about what it is. Worldwide, 
it is going to go up significantly, but in the United States, we are 
still going to need oil and natural gas at about the level we are at 
right now, at least through 2050.
  Now, we can talk a lot about carbon capture, and I am all in on that 
conversation. But making it harder and more expensive to actually get 
oil and natural gas while we know we are going to need the same amount 
or more, who pays for that? Well, consumers do.
  So let's look at the simple facts on this. In January of 2020, before 
COVID starts striking worldwide, natural gas prices: $2.02 a unit. 
Natural gas prices in January of 2022, the latest number we have: 
$4.38.
  Let's look at gasoline for every person that is actually filling up 
their

[[Page S639]]

tank. If we go back to, let's say, February 2019, well before the 
pandemic--we will just compare February to February. Before that time 
period, it was $2.39 a gallon. Today, the average price is $3.47 a 
gallon.
  What are we experiencing? Policy pressure on limiting access. And 
what is happening right now is that Sarah Bloom Raskin has been 
nominated to step into the Federal Reserve, and her primary issue is: 
Make it even harder.
  When our gasoline prices have gone up almost 50 percent in the last 
year, I would have to say this administration is intentionally finding 
ways to be able to make the price of energy more expensive, to be able 
to push people to other energy resources. Who feels the pain of that? 
Every single American.
  I wish I could just say this was hyperbole, but let me read just a 
few things to you.

  During the COVID pandemic, the Federal Reserve was stepping in and 
trying to stabilize companies around the country that were struggling 
and that were challenged. And we all know plenty of companies that were 
struggling or challenged.
  One of the things the Federal Reserve did, like they did for every 
other company, was also to stabilize oil and gas companies, because if 
those oil and gas companies tanked, that means we have got to get 
energy from overseas in the days ahead. So they did what they did to 
every other entity. They were neutral in it and said: If you are a 
company that is providing an infrastructure, we are going to provide 
you access to resources the same as everyone else--except Sarah Bloom 
Raskin wrote this: The Federal Reserve ``buying troubled assets from 
the fossil fuel industry'' is ``dangerous.''
  She said: ``It's bad for the economy, bad for the environment, bad 
for all of us.''
  If Sarah Bloom Raskin was in the Federal Reserve during the COVID 
pandemic, we would have likely seen multiple energy companies across 
the United States collapse for lack of capital, and, right now, we 
would be buying even more gasoline and even more oil or natural gas 
from Russia instead.
  I am not sure how that solves the problem, but her priority is this 
simple statement she has made: ``Financial regulators must reimagine 
their own role so they can play their part in the broader, reimagining 
of our economy.''
  Now, I don't know how many people who I would run into in Oklahoma 
who would say: Do you know who I want reimagining our economy? Not the 
free market but someone in DC--I would be interested in them at their 
office, working with the capital assets across the country and managing 
who gets access to capital and who doesn't. I would like to have 
someone I have never met, in DC, reimagining our economy based on their 
preferences.
  I don't meet many people like that in Oklahoma. They want a fair 
playing field, they want a level playing field, and they want free 
markets.
  Do we want a clean economy? Absolutely, we do.
  I would challenge anyone in this Chamber to look at the energy 
breakdown in Oklahoma and compare it to your State's energy breakdown, 
in the amount of renewables that we use in our State versus what you 
are using in yours.
  We are passionate about a clean-energy future, but we are also 
realists in the process and not trying to drive the price up for every 
person in the process.
  Maria Robinson has also been nominated to be Assistant Secretary of 
the Office of Electricity. I met with her earlier this week. Ms. 
Robinson is from Massachusetts. She has vocally opposed natural gas 
pipelines coming into New England. She was pretty clear that she 
understands they use dirtier home heating oil in the Northeast, but she 
doesn't want natural gas pipelines coming in. But she didn't seem to 
oppose when a Russian tanker pulled in and offloaded natural gas into 
Boston Harbor. So, literally, buying natural gas from the Russians, not 
from the United States, didn't seem to be an issue. But she did make 
this statement: ``I would certainly be a part of [the] group of folks 
who oppose any new gas pipelines.''
  In my conversation with her, I asked her about--I just picked a day. 
January 16, 2022, is the day picked just in our conversation. I said: 
That particular day in New England, 24 percent of the energy generation 
was from fuel oil. Over 30 percent was from natural gas. And 8 percent 
was from renewables--8. That particular day, 24 percent was from home 
heating oil, over 30 percent natural gas, and 8 percent from 
renewables.
  So my simple question was this: What are you planning to substitute 
in that? How is this going to work?
  Her response was, well, in our area in New England, we are working on 
connecting our grid more to other parts of the country to deliver 
electricity to us.
  What that really means: We don't like windmills. We don't like to 
look at them in Boston Harbor. We don't like offshore wind. We want 
windmills built in Oklahoma, and you guys just ship us our electricity 
so we can flick on the light.
  Ms. Laura Daniels Davis. She has been nominated to be Assistant 
Secretary for the Office of Land and Minerals Management. She is 
currently in her role already with DOI. In her role in DOI, she has 
already made the change that routine permitting decisions that are 
typically made in the field to expedite the process of making permits, 
those have all been pulled up to her desk in Washington, DC, where they 
have slowed down dramatically.
  The clear signal was this: If you want to do any oil and gas 
development, it has to come through me, and it is not going to be rapid 
like it used to be. So if you are going to invest capital, just 
understand your capital is whether I make that decision or not.
  They have not held a single onshore oil and gas lease sale, even 
though they are required by law to do so. They just ignored it for a 
year and said: We are studying it.
  There is also a 5-year leasing plan that is required for offshore oil 
and gas development. So while they have cut off onshore, offshore there 
is a 5-year lease plan that has to be put in place that is due by June 
of this year. So far, we have no signal they have even begun that, and 
it takes months to be able to develop it.
  Why are these individuals being selected for these positions? Because 
it is very clear they have certain priorities in place. They were 
selected because they are going to block out anything that deals with 
oil and gas, and their focus is to cut it off right now--cut off 
pipelines, cut off new leasing, cut off offshore leasing, make it 
harder to be able to get access to capital. All of that will raise 
prices for American consumers.
  Today--today--it was announced that the inflation rate in the United 
States is now at 7\1/2\ percent. It continues to rise month after month 
after month. I would say to you: That is directly connected to a group 
of policies that have been put in place to make energy more expensive--
and it is--to make it more difficult to be able to do a lot of things 
in permitting and such--and it is.
  Yes, we are recovering from COVID. I am very aware. But the policies 
that are put in place are also driving this.
  We have 2 million people that have illegally crossed the border last 
year--2 million. That is an enormous number. That 2-million number did 
not happen by just the calendar and by COVID. Policies were put in 
place that have led to a flood of people illegally crossing our border. 
Policies are being put in place by individuals who are directly leading 
to 7\1/2\ percent inflation in our country.
  Can I say to you this? Half of Americans alive have never in their 
lifetime experienced inflation like they are experiencing right now? 
Half of the Americans alive do not know what 7\1/2\ percent inflation 
is going to mean to them personally, but they are learning quickly 
because what they thought they were going to buy last month, they can 
no longer afford this month. And it doesn't look better next month. And 
if we don't deal with real consequences for people, including who is 
put into different positions, this never gets better.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask that the scheduled vote occur 
immediately.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.