[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1167-S1169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Energy
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk
about American energy.
Joe Biden is the President of high prices and of low approval
ratings. Just yesterday, a gallon of gas sold for the highest price
ever in the United States, and inflation is at a 40-year high.
Now, the American people clearly understand that radical Democrat
energy policies are the cause of these high prices--the prices that
people are paying every time they go to the pump to fill up.
On Thursday, the White House admitted, in terms of these high prices,
that it is going to get worse. Of course, Democrats are trying to blame
Vladimir Putin for the high price at the pump. Well, to me, it is
dishonest, and it is desperate. Vladimir Putin didn't cause the
inflation crisis that began in this country 12 months ago.
Now, Vladimir Putin has cashed in on America's inflation crisis. He
has done it by selling more energy at high prices, and he has done it
for more than a year. It has been his cash cow.
America's inflation crisis is specifically the result of Democrat
spending and Democrat attacks on American energy. The two combined have
added to the situation that we are in now, attacking American energy
and massive spending.
Last March, Joe Biden signed the single-most expensive spending bill
in American history. Even his own experts warned him not to do it.
Democrat economics expert Larry Summers, who had been Treasury
Secretary for President Clinton, warned that this is going to cause
inflation. Last February, the former Obama and
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Clinton adviser wrote in the Washington Post--this is from Larry
Summers:
There is a chance that . . . stimulus on a scale closer to
World War II levels . . . will set off inflationary
pressures.
He said:
Inflationary pressures of a kind [that] we have not seen in
a generation.
He is exactly right. That is what has happened. That is why we are at
a 40-year high of inflation, and that is a generation.
Obama adviser Jason Furman said the same thing. He said that bill was
``definitely too big.'' He said: ``I don't know any economist''--
``any,'' he said--``who was recommending something the size of what''
President Biden was doing.
Yet Joe Biden proved to be hard of hearing, refused to listen to what
they had to say, signed the bill anyway, put $2 trillion on our
Nation's credit card, and he flooded the country with government cash.
Ever since then, this country has been in an inflation upward spiral.
At the same time, Joe Biden also had a stranglehold over American
energy supply. He announced it during the campaign and enforced it the
day he took office.
Energy is called the master resource for a reason. It powers our
economy. It powers our military. It powers our Nation. It is critically
important. When the price of energy goes up, so does the price of
everything else.
Starting on his first day in office, Joe Biden has waged an all-out
war on American energy. He shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, and he
bragged about it--no hiding from this one. He shut down oil and gas
leases on Federal lands. He bragged about that as well. He shut down
exploration for energy in the Arctic.
It was always interesting to see the senior Senator from Alaska, Ms.
Murkowski, come to the floor and say over the last year that we are
using more energy from Vladimir Putin's Russia than we are from Alaska,
her home State, in terms of oil.
Those are because of Joe Biden's policies.
Now his lackeys at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are
making it almost impossible to build gas pipelines, to move gas from
where it is explored to where it is needed. As a result, we are today
actually producing a lot less energy than we were prior to the
pandemic.
I heard the White House spokesperson. She talked about the fact that
we are at record-high levels. We are not. We are at about 1.3 million
barrels of oil a day--fewer now being produced in the United States
than we were prior to the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were No.
1 in production in the world. Now we are No. 3, behind Saudi Arabia and
behind Russia.
What does lower supply of American energy mean? Well, in supply and
demand, lower supply means higher prices.
When Joe Biden took office, a gallon of gas was at $2.38. It went up
every month. Twelve of the last 13 months, the price of gas kept going
up at the pump. Twelve of the 13 months that Joe Biden has been in the
White House, the price of gas went up.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin was laughing all the way to the bank.
Joe Biden must be patting himself on the back right now about banning
Russian oil, something that took him kicking and screaming to do after
bipartisan Members of the House and the Senate came together and said:
You have got to stop doing this.
It took him a couple of extra weeks to come to the realization that
this body and the House, in a bipartisan way, were opposed to the
delays--the ongoing delays--of this administration.
Now Joe Biden has his latest excuse for inflation. He said it is
Vladimir Putin. The American people aren't buying it. In record
numbers, they are not buying what the President is trying to sell.
The American people haven't forgotten the past year. It has been a
year of high prices. It has been a year of misery and pain for families
all across the country.
For Joe Biden, it has been a year of excuses. The excuses keep
changing, but they are ongoing.
First, he said that inflation was transitory. He said it month after
month after month after month.
And, then, remember when he said inflation was a good thing? Then, of
course, he blamed corporate greed--always looking for somebody else to
blame, always trying to pass the buck. Now he says inflation, which has
been crushing American families, was because of Vladimir Putin, just 3
weeks ago.
Mr. President, people have been suffering under inflation, and their
wages haven't been keeping up with the rising prices in this country
for well over a year, since you took office. People recognize that.
They remember the pain and the suffering in trying to go through
Christmas, trying to decide whether they could afford gifts for the
family; families who had to decide, living on a fixed income, if they
could afford to eat or to heat their homes. That was all before Putin,
and they haven't forgotten, Mr. President. Even though you may not
think they remember, they do.
It is now 8 months until there are elections, and I know we are going
to hear a lot more excuses from the Democrats in Washington between now
and November 8. I expect the excuses are going to change a couple more
times. None of the excuses are going to be believable. So they will
keep trying to come up with another one.
Inflation sure wasn't transitory, not for a full year, not to a point
where we are now at a 40-year high for inflation.
How about that idea when the President said inflation was a good
thing? Actually, we heard it from the White House Press Secretary. We
heard it from the White House Chief of Staff. They said inflation is a
sign of high demand.
If our economy is doing so well, why don't the American people
believe it? What kind of fantasyland is the President living in?
According to the Washington Post, Joe Biden's approval rating on the
economy--how well he is doing in the economy--out of 100 points, he is
at 37 percent approval. These are record-low numbers.
So Democrats can use their arguments all that they want. I think it
just makes Americans want to reject anything the Democrats are trying
to sell.
If Democrats are right about corporate greed, then, why have
Democrats done nothing about it? They have run Washington for the past
full year plus a couple of months. Democrats have had the time to
introduce plenty of bills: bills to raise taxes, bills to take over
elections, bills to pack the Supreme Court from 9 up to 13 members,
bills to make Washington, DC, a State. What can they point to as an
accomplishment to actually address and lower inflation? That is what
the American people want.
Just this past weekend, studies are out. What is the No. 1 concern of
the American people? It is inflation. What are Democrats doing about
it? Nothing. They are making it worse.
So we are living in this world where Democrats and the White House
continue to spin one story after another, and Democrat spokesmen for
the party continue to try to convince the American people: Don't
believe your own two eyes; believe them. The American people are
smarter than that.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It is about a year after
the inflation crisis began. It is a great human tragedy, and it is
heartbreaking.
Tomorrow, Members of this body will be having a video address by
President Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, a heroic and courageous
individual who is leading his nation with stubborn courage, historic
patriotism, fighting for freedom. To try to tie this to the inflation
that the American people have been suffering through for the last year
is just wrong.
And 2021 was the worst inflation in 40 years, long before Putin
invaded Ukraine. By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, gas prices were up
in the United States more than $1 a gallon, and America was more
addicted to Russian oil because that is what Joe Biden wanted. He
wanted us to need more Russian oil. But that didn't stop Joe Biden from
trying to blame the whole thing on Putin.
Former adviser Steve Rattner put it this way:
This is [Joe] Biden's inflation and he needs to own it.
Over the weekend, Larry Summers said this:
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The president was wrong--
He is talking about Joe Biden.
He said:
The president was wrong to blame this month's [inflation]
number on [the war in] Ukraine.
Larry Summers went on to say:
[Everyone] had been expecting, from the time before Putin
launched the invasion, that inflation was going to
accelerate.
He went on to say:
This is a consequence, fundamentally, of an overheated
economy.
He said:
And we are not going to have a full solution until we do
something about that overheated economy.
A full year has passed--one year in office, a 40-year high of
inflation, and a year full of excuses by a President whose excuses do
not add up. What adds up is the fundamental fact that American families
spent $1,000 more on energy during Joe Biden's first year as President
than they did the previous year. And it is going to be worse this year.
The time for excuses is over. There is no excuse for restricting
American energy production. Democratic Senators spent 10 months denying
that there even was inflation and doing nothing about it. Yet now some
Democrats in this body are talking about making it even worse. They
have introduced multiple bills to raise taxes. Astonishingly, one of
the bills they have introduced is to raise taxes on American energy.
They already tried that last year with their reckless tax-and-
spending spree. Now, it seems like some of them want to do it again. If
we put more taxes on American energy, what is that going to do? It is
going to raise the price even higher. Higher costs on producers are
going to become higher costs on the customers.
People don't want us to raise costs; they want us to reduce costs.
That is what they are complaining about. That is what we have gotten as
a result of the Biden policies. We need to break this choke hold that
the Democrats and the Biden administration have on American energy.
So how do we do that? Well, 2 weeks ago, I led a letter with every
Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, and we sent it to President
Biden on the morning after the State of the Union Address. We gave him
a list of 10 specific actions that he could take today to produce more
American energy and bring down the costs for American families.
Step one would be to end his Executive order on oil and gas leases on
Federal lands. Half of my home State of Wyoming is Federal lands. There
is an abundance of energy there. The American people need it. It will
help reduce costs for families. It will actually bring tax revenue into
the government, both the State as well as the Federal Government. Yet
Joe Biden is not interested.
Joe Biden's Executive order has no basis in science, no basis in law.
It needs to be rescinded today. The fact that some people have leases
to explore for energy--a small number--is no excuse for the President's
actions. Over 4,000 leases are awaiting permission to drill right now.
They have a lease, but they are tied up in redtape and cannot get
permission to drill from the government. So even if you have a lease,
you need to then get permission from the government to use the lease.
They ought to approve those leases today.
But we need to go further. We need a long-term commitment from the
Government of the United States to produce American energy to help
American families. Leases take years to explore and to develop. We need
a commitment that is going to last long term. No one is going to make
those kinds of investments if they think Joe Biden is going to shut
them down again the next day.
Now, American energy companies have a lot of good reasons not to
trust Joe Biden, not to trust those whom he has--the anointed ones whom
he has appointed to high positions in the government.
If you just take a look at Joe Biden's nominees, they are a
murderer's row of climate elitists and climate alarmists, and those are
the ones that call the tune for this President.
If you took a year of Joe Biden's energy policies and take a look at
what has happened over the past year that got us here today and you
explain that to the American public and you say: What do you think
about this? as they are filling up their tank, two-thirds of them would
say: Under these Biden policies--two-thirds would say--the country is
heading in the wrong direction.
That may be every Republican. It is also a lot of Independents, and
it is also some Democrats as well who have buyer's remorse at what they
have gotten from this President. It is going to take time to repair the
damage. We need to start today. The time for excuses and blame from
this administration needs to be over. The American public is demanding
American energy, and we need it now.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.