[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 13, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3255-S3256]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Biden Administration
Ms. ERNST. Madam President, 200 years ago, the Senate went about
their business without computers, without cell phones, and any of our
other modern conveniences that run on electricity, including the very
lights in this room. Working by candlelight might sound quaint today,
but many Americans may find themselves doing just that in the not too
distant future because the Biden administration is taking the country
back to the era of no electricity.
Folks, with President Biden and his same team of advisers who created
a nationwide baby formula shortage and out-of-control inflation
overseeing their ``energy transition,'' what could possibly go wrong?
You don't have to look any further than your energy bills to get an
answer.
Prices at the pump have nearly doubled since Biden's first day in
office when he started signing Executive orders to turn off American
energy supplies. And home electricity prices have increased more than
20 percent since just last summer. What is worse than these expensive
energy bills? Well, folks, how about no power at all? Most of the
Nation is currently in danger of experiencing power outages due to
energy shortages caused by the closure of power plants as part of the
Democrats' push towards renewables. These Biden blackouts will make it
impossible to even run fans and air conditioners on the hottest days of
the summer.
But not to worry, folks, Biden's Energy Department has issued some
tips of what to do in case of an outage, which include stocking up on
candles, keeping an ice chest on hand, and having a gallon of water
available for every person in your house for each day you are without
electricity.
Folks, that is not the most reassuring advice since no one knows how
many days we could be kept in the dark during a Biden blackout.
The reality is these power outages pose a bigger problem than just
the inconvenience of being uncomfortably warm or unable to watch TV for
a few hours or possibly days.
Extended outages could be a matter of life or death for many folks
who depend upon electronic medical devices or temperature-sensitive
medicines.
You are probably wondering how it is even possible in 2022 for there
to be an energy shortage right here in the United States of America. It
is simple math: Democratic policies.
The ongoing closure of traditional power plants is reducing our
capacity to supply enough electricity for millions of homes and
renewables are not yet producing enough energy on their own to make up
the difference.
The Democrats are predictably blaming global warming, but the truth
is the rolling blackouts and rising prices are really being caused by
man-made energy change. Just this year, the Biden administration has
reduced domestic oil and gas leasing, created regulatory barriers for
building pipelines, and taken administrative actions that put hundreds
of solar energy projects across the U.S. on hold.
We can't just turn off the power sources we depend upon without
having reliable, abundant, and affordable alternatives readily
available. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats, at President Biden's
direction, are doing.
I am proud that my home State of Iowa was the first State in the
Nation to adopt a renewable portfolio standard nearly 40 years ago.
Today, Iowa generates most of our energy from renewables, with wind
power being our primary source. Iowa also leads the Nation in the
production of ethanol and biodiesel. And despite what critics say, the
use of corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel reduce greenhouse gas
emissions while helping to keep our Nation energy independent and our
State green and clean.
However, renewables still only produce a fraction of the total
electricity the Nation relies on to run, making it impossible and
irresponsible to simply unplug our traditional energy sources.
Just look at California, which has set a goal of achieving a carbon-
free power grid. The State is forecasting that energy shortages could
leave as many as 4 million California residents without power this
summer.
The State's utility provider wants to build five new fossil-fuel
power generators to ensure the availability of reliable electricity in
the future. But the challenge is more than just making up for the
reduction in power production because the transition to renewables is
creating new demands for electricity.
For example, our increasingly unreliable power grid will face even
greater strains as more and more electric vehicles are plugged into it.
To drive just 100 miles, an EV requires about the same amount of
electricity as it takes to run a home for an entire day, including
lights, heating and air-conditioning, and appliances. Tesla, the
world's top EV carmaker, is already asking EV owners to not charge
their cars during certain hours of the day to better ration the use of
electricity.
And while President Biden and the Democrats keep telling Americans to
buy an electric vehicle to cut down on the cost of gas, the high
sticker price makes EVs unaffordable.
Folks, the cold, hard truth is electric vehicles are not as
economical, environmental, or ethical as the Democrats want us to
believe. Proponents of the Green New Deal portray themselves as heroes
in a fairy tale riding to the rescue--on an EV, of course--to defeat
the greedy corporations polluting the planet for profit so we can all
live happily ever after. But the truth is it ain't that easy being
green.
Consider the component parts used in both EVs and solar panels. Well,
they are largely produced by Communist China's State-supported
corporations, often using slave and child labor.
As a result, the world will be more dependent on Communist China for
some energy products in a post-carbon economy than we are on OPEC for
petroleum today.
President Biden's own Energy Department admits that ``U.S.
decarbonization goals are reliant on both Chinese firms and the Chinese
government.''
And while we will rely on China for the technology, the communist
regime will rely more heavily on the forced labor of children and
modern-day slaves to produce it. Consider, almost half of the world
supply of polysilicon used in solar panels is made in Communist China,
often by the hands of forced labor of ethnic and religious minorities.
And nearly every silicon-based solar panel is likely to contain
components that originated in the area of China where forced labor
camps are widespread. China also has significant financial control over
the world's supply of cobalt, which is an essential element used in the
batteries of EVs.
The Congo produces 70 percent of the world's cobalt, and Chinese-
backed companies own or have a financial interest in most of the
African nation's cobalt mines. These Chinese corporations are
subjecting the miners to physical abuse and hazardous conditions in
exchange for very little money. Tens of thousands of children--some as
young as 4 years old--are exploited to work in the mines with few
safety protections.
[[Page S3256]]
President Biden promised to create green jobs, but he didn't mention
that they would be done by children in Africa or slaves in China. These
poor kids are mistreated and malnourished and even drugged to suppress
their hunger so they can work for longer hours. Breathing in toxic
fumes causes long-term health problems, including lung disease and
heart failure, as well as birth defects. And miners are often buried
alive when tunnels cave in.
These are some of the kids who mine the cobalt to make an EV run. And
in the other photo are some of the folks who produce ethanol for motor
vehicles. I know which photo I would rather see. Who powers your
vehicle?
In addition to the toxic harm to humans, the extraction of cobalt
also causes severe environmental pollution to the water, air, and to
the soil.
Just take a look at this picture. This is a mine in Congo where
cobalt is extracted to make batteries for EVs. Nothing about this
landscape looks like an environmental success story to me. By contrast,
the picture over here is a beautiful farm in Iowa where corn is grown
to make fuel for motor vehicles. Every year, I drive through mile after
mile of cornfields on my 99-county tour. It is the type of scenic drive
that reconnects you with nature and reminds you of the importance of
proper stewardship of the land we live off of.
Folks, we can all have a cleaner conscience knowing that energy made
in Iowa is creating economic opportunities for our neighbors, while
keeping our communities green, rather than exploiting children or
creating a toxic wasteland. Can the same be said about the initiatives
that are being pushed by the Biden administration? Like begging OPEC to
pump more oil, sending our Nation's strategic oil reserves to China, or
subsidizing China's market in slave and child labor.
Are we going to tell the truth to the children that riding the
electric school buses that the Biden administration is spending $5
billion on to purchase, what really makes the wheels on these buses go
round and round is the exploitation of other children who are their age
or even younger? Or are we just going to tell them more green fairy
tales?
It is time to come clean about the Democrats' Green New Deal. Just
like President Biden's other policies, this radical agenda is creating
problems, not solving them, including greater dependency on foreign
adversaries like China and Russia, reliance on child and slave forced
labor, harm to human health and the environment, higher costs, and
energy shortages and blackouts. Democrats are literally trying to keep
America in the dark about these inconvenient truths.
Folks, the Biden blackouts will be the latest unneeded reminder that
the Democrats' Green New Deal can't hold a candle to the Republicans'
record of producing an abundant supply of affordable energy right here
in the good old United States of America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, it is so interesting being home for
July 4 and talking with Tennesseans, and it sounds like Senator Ernst
heard some of the same things from her constituents there in Iowa.
But what came up a lot in our conversations was the feeling and the
awareness that the Democrats and the media have spent the last few
months trying to convince the American people that oil companies are to
blame for Biden's energy crisis.
At one point, they even tried to blame the people running the local
gas stations, all the moms and pops, but Tennesseans know whose fault
it is. Tennesseans are smart. They are watching very closely. And they
know that President Biden became responsible for their pain the moment
he chose a radical, environmental agenda over the fully realized vision
of American energy independence.
That is right, we were energy independent the day he took office.
So President Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. He canceled leases
and energy infrastructure, and he got behind dozens of regulations that
have made it almost impossible for American energy producers to do
their job.
At the time, Democrats claimed this was all for the greater good. It
is temporary. It is transitioning to the liberal world order. But I
think any reasonable person would agree that what has happened is
things have gotten worse--terribly worse.
If you don't want to take my word for it, talk to the local leaders
who are responsible for keeping the lights on in their communities.
City budgets are stretched thin. School budgets aren't doing any
better. Parents want to know if the buses will keep running and what
will happen in August if the schools can't afford to turn the air-
conditioning on. Everyone wants to know what will happen to public
transportation, to emergency services, and to law enforcement if the
price of a gallon of gas gets too expensive. They have no idea how far
the Biden administration will allow this to go, and that is what
concerns them the most.
Joe Biden hasn't just failed ``we the people,'' he has sabotaged the
pocketbooks of millions of Americans and given our adversaries a huge
advantage.
The Democrats gambled on the Green New Deal. It is evident they lost.
Their gas holiday was a gimmick, and that failed. Energy prices are
through the roof, but they still pulled a million barrels of oil out of
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and they sent it to communist China.
Now the President of the United States has gone hat in hand to Saudi
Arabia so that he can beg for oil. He is even trying to cozy up to the
Iranians with a new Iran nuclear deal, begging for oil. Our hard-fought
energy independence is gone, along with our Nation's credibility on
this issue.
The world is watching Joe Biden. They are watching the Biden
blackouts that are really taking a toll on American energy and American
consumers, and you and I both know that all the wrong people are seeing
this as an opportunity to profit.
If the Biden administration continues to squander our country's
resources, we will lose even more ground to the axis of evil. Russia
still has a stranglehold on European energy. American supply chains are
still hopelessly entangled with China. Iran is ready to steamroll Biden
for that new nuclear deal. North Korea is deploying hackers to the West
at an alarming rate. I don't think a Civilian Climate Corps has a
chance in this match-up.
I would admonish the President to remember that the new axis of evil
is playing by a different set of rules. Their only goal is to find our
vulnerabilities and exploit them to try to take us down.
I would remind my Democratic colleagues that Biden's energy crisis is
a vulnerability, and it is your duty to help lead the country out of
it. Don't be complicit. Restart the Keystone Pipeline, open up those
leases on Federal lands, get the regulators out of the way, and unleash
American energy before it is too late.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, before I speak, I have been asked to
make a unanimous consent request that Senators Scott, Hoeven, Barrasso,
and I be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each prior to the votes
and that Senator Bennet be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes
prior to the votes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.