[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 20 (Tuesday, January 31, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S159-S161]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             BIG GOVERNMENT

  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, last week, I spent time on the floor 
urging my colleagues to prioritize freedom in the 118th Congress. By 
learning from the mistakes of overregulation in the past, we can focus 
on creating a brighter future and a more prosperous future for all 
Americans.
  We should be doing everything we can to fix the problems created by 
the government and get Americans back on their feet by unleashing our 
economic potential and opening doors of opportunity. Unfortunately, too 
many here in Washington are still focused on growing the size of 
government and adding regulations they say will save the environment. 
However, very rarely does making the government larger benefit the 
American taxpayers and the American citizens of this country.
  For decades, fans of Big Government have used climate change warnings 
to grow their power--for decades, for as long as I can remember. They 
have claimed we are near the edge of a climate cliff--a prediction they 
know is impossible to prove and has never come true. Of course, they 
claim the only solution to this cooked-up crisis is for you, the 
American taxpayer, to sacrifice even more of your freedoms to tackle 
this so-called climate dilemma. This sacrifice won't come from the 
elites, who flew their private jets to Switzerland just a few weeks 
ago--the ones who are crowing about this. They flew, just a couple of 
weeks ago, to lecture, while they were there, the working families of 
this country. No. These sacrifices are expected to be made by average, 
hard-working American taxpayers. That is what they want.
  They want you to give up your affordable gas for imported fuel that 
is

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triple the cost. They want you to give up your ground beef for 
overpriced and underwhelming meat substitutes. They want you to give up 
affordable, abundant clean energy we could produce right here in 
America for the enormous cost of green energy policies. They even want 
you to be banned from cooking on gas stoves because how you cook in 
your own kitchen is now the government's business. They want our 
farmers to cut back and worry about emissions while they are focused on 
feeding the country and the rest of the world, which is a huge 
priority. Most importantly, they expect you, the American taxpayer, to 
foot the bill for their radical climate agenda--obviously.
  Well, I think I speak for most Americans when I say: No way. We 
should say ``no way'' to overpriced electric cars that are made with 
cobalt, processed and sold by China, and plugged into a charger that is 
powered by fossil fuels anyway. How do we come up with electricity? By 
fossil fuels.
  We should say ``no'' to fake meats--products that taste as bad as 
their price and that will eventually kill our livestock producers' way 
of life. What are we trying to do--put our farmers out of business? 
Exactly. That is what the climate agenda is about, even though, as we 
all know, our food security is national security, and we should be 
promoting domestic food production by protecting our Nation's farmers 
in every possible way we can--in every way.
  We should say ``no'' to unreliable energy sources and the 
skyrocketing utility bills we are seeing today because America cannot 
operate and achieve economic success without fossil fuels. It is 
impossible. I don't know what we are trying to prove. We will come 
back, but, hopefully, it is not at the sacrifice of the American 
taxpayers.
  We should say ``no'' to trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars 
spent on an agenda that is based only on the rantings of failed 
candidates like Al Gore and John Kerry, global elites at a ski resort, 
and a European teenager who needs to go back to school and learn to 
read and write and learn math and stay out of politics at her age. That 
agenda is based solely on fearmongering and unproven theories--
unproven--but that is how the left likes it. That is how they use 
fear--to push policy. Their agenda ignores reliable clean energy 
sources, like nuclear and natural gas that should be viable, but that 
does not fit their narrative. That is the reason they don't talk about 
it.

  They know nuclear energy--nuclear energy--is the answer, but the 
climate change group who continues to bark about this, they don't want 
answers. They don't want to talk about nuclear because the problem 
itself is too valuable for their pocketbooks and politicians' 
ambitions. Instead, their narrative has created a growing--growing--
group of Americans and people around the world who now genuinely 
believe they should live in fear every day. We are teaching it in our 
schools, we are teaching it in clubs, and it is wrong. These are the 
folks who throw soup at famous paintings while gluing themselves to the 
wall and shut down city streets and major highways, calling themselves 
climate activists.
  For standing here on the Senate floor calling this out, some may call 
me a climate change denier, so I want to be clear. As a conservative, I 
believe in protecting our environment, conserving our natural 
resources, and doing what we can to make sure Americans live in a 
clean, safe environment, in clean communities that will last for 
generations to come. But I do not believe that we need to give up our 
livelihoods, our way of life, our access to affordable food and energy 
because of false claims that we are just a few years away from 
extinction. These claims are simply not true, and repeating them is 
dangerous. Instead, I believe we should be investing--investing 
heavily--in American energy production because we already produce some 
of the cleanest energy on the face of the Earth.
  Giving up our cars, our farms, and our affordable gas prices will do 
nothing--will do nothing--to stop the changing climate. It has done it 
for millions of years, and nothing we can do is going to stop that. In 
fact, in recent years, the United States has only been responsible for 
about 11 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions--11 percent. 
In comparison, China, a country with zero plans to cut back, is 
responsible for 27 percent of global emissions. China's total emissions 
of greenhouse gases in 2019 were more than our country and every 
developed country in the world combined.
  Our adversaries, like the Chinese, have no plans--they have no 
plans--to cut back their usage because their economies are growing 
thanks to affordable energy. In 2020 alone, China invested almost $475 
million in coal projects. That was in addition to the 1,100 coal 
powerplants they already have in use--almost four times the number we 
have in the United States. Guess what. They are building 350 as we 
speak. They are not slowing down. Their emissions level will continue 
to increase rapidly.
  Meanwhile, our country's emissions have fallen by about 17 percent 
since 2005, thanks--now, think about this--thanks in part to our turn 
to abundant, cleaner sources, such as natural gas, of which we have a 
200-year supply already under the ground in this country as we speak. 
We couldn't use it in 200 years. But we refuse to dig for it, and we 
refuse to use it.
  Not only can we produce the world's cleanest natural gas, we also 
have the ability to produce the cleanest nuclear power in all of the 
world--the cleanest. We have refused to use it. We want to import the 
dirtiest oil, refine it here in our country, and pollute our country 
because we are too stubborn to use our own.
  That will eventually change. It always goes back around. We will use 
our energy and in just a short period of time. But the climate 
extremists running the current administration's energy policies would 
rather beg foreign countries and make deals with dictators whose 
countries produce all that dirtier oil. It makes no sense.
  Blaming the United States for a global problem we didn't create is 
unfair to whom? The American taxpayers.
  Importantly, the energy that we can and should produce at home is 
terrible for our own economy--that is what they are saying. It makes no 
sense.
  We have to be able to do two things at once: Help our economy thrive 
and promote innovation that leads to cleaner energy production. We can 
do two things at one time, but a cult-like obsession with climate 
alarmism is making us weaker and poorer in the name of a problem 
created by politicians.
  I am calling for commonsense solutions. Let American companies 
produce more energy. Recognize the benefits of clean energy, like 
natural gas and nuclear--that is the answer. Stop scaring people into 
depression by warning of the great climate extinction. Fear is a 
terrible thing to use. It is not true.
  We should focus on solutions that will actually help our people. Last 
year, I introduced the Restoring American Energy Independence Act. This 
bill would have reversed President Biden's shutdown of American energy 
and returned American energy to full production. Of course, it went 
nowhere with a Democrat-controlled Senate. It didn't get to first base. 
I hope to see this legislation and other sensible energy solutions put 
forth in this Congress.
  Sooner or later, we are going to use common sense, we are going to 
start looking after our country and the American taxpayer, and we are 
going to get off this high horse of thinking we have all the answers, 
when we do have them here, and it is our American energy.
  I hope to see this legislation and other sensible energy legislation 
and solutions put forth in this Congress. We have to do something. We 
can't keep punishing the American citizen and the American taxpayer, 
because if we keep our energy policies woke, we are going to go broke. 
This country is going to go flat broke. We are going to lose our 
farmers, we are going to lose small businesses, our prices are going to 
continue to rise, and it seems like nobody cares.
  We better start taking care of the American people. If we unleash 
domestic production, we can produce clean energy, we can make it more 
affordable, and we can make life a lot simpler and better for the 
American people and also our allies. Let's wake up and smell the roses.

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