[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 32 (Thursday, February 16, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S436]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Energy
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it was good to hear President Biden
acknowledge in his State of the Union speech last week that we still
need oil. He is right.
And while I am a big supporter of clean energy, and I am proud to
come from a State that gets the majority of our electricity generation
from renewables, the fact of the matter is that even in States like
mine, conventional energy sources like oil and natural gas are
essential to maintaining an affordable, stable, and reliable energy
supply.
Renewable technologies have come a long way, but they still have a
ways to go. And we, literally, wouldn't be able to keep the lights on
in this country without conventional energy sources like natural gas
and coal.
So it was good to hear the President acknowledge that we still depend
on affordable and reliable legacy sources of energy like oil. But it
would be even better if he pursued an agenda that acknowledged it,
instead of an agenda that is actively hostile to conventional energy
production.
From canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline on day 1 to hiking taxes on
oil and gas companies and making it more challenging for companies to
make more oil and gas, the President's agenda seems designed to do
everything it can to discourage production of the oil the President
says that we need.
And then there is ESG. The Biden administration has been attempting
to use the long arm of regulation to implement ESG policies--
environmental, social, and governance policies--to advance its anti-
conventional energy climate agenda. The President's ESG regulations are
designed to choke off investment into the oil and gas industries and
even to other essential industries like farming and ranching due to
their natural methane emissions.
Take, for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed
climate disclosure rule. This would require publicly traded companies
to disclose information, not only about their own greenhouse gas
emissions but, in many cases, about those of their suppliers and even
their customers. It would also require companies to determine the
effects of climate-related risks on each line item of their
consolidated financial statements.
There are multiple problems with this rule, one notable problem being
the fact that it is a totally unworkable regulation. Companies have
zero control over the emissions of their suppliers and customers and
little to no ability to accurately gauge those emissions.
But leaving aside the unworkability factor, the major problem with
this proposed rule is that it is clearly designed to coerce companies
to sever or reconsider their ties with certain industries, notably, of
course, the conventional energy industry but also with other industries
like agriculture.
Private companies, of course, have the right to consider whatever
factors they want when determining what companies they would do
business with and what they will invest in. But the Federal Government
should not be putting its thumb on the scale. And the SEC rule is just
one of the regulations the Biden administration has put forward
designed to encourage investment in industries that aren't part of
Democrat's Green New Deal vision.
There is the Biden administration's proposed Federal contractor rule,
which, like the SEC rule, would require companies applying for certain
Federal contracts to disclose not only their own direct and indirect
emissions but also, in some cases, related emissions over which the
contractor has no control.
The Federal Reserve--they are getting in on the act, too--has stepped
outside its statutory role and established a pilot program to analyze
climate-related financial risks for the Nation's largest banks. The
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, and the Fed have all put forward principles for
large banks on ``climate-related financial risk management.'' And the
list goes on.
Then there is the Department of Labor. In November, the Department of
Labor issued a new rule that would allow pension plan fiduciaries--
these are individuals who manage Americans' retirement accounts--to
consider ESG; in other words, environmental, social, governance factors
and not just the rate of return when investing their customers' money.
In other words, the individuals--think about this--the individuals
who manage $11.7 trillion of Americans' retirement will no longer be
required to make investment decisions based solely on maximizing
return. Instead, they will now be allowed to opt for a less valuable
investment if they prefer its environmental profile.
I want you to just let that sink in for a minute. The Biden
administration has essentially announced that its top goal is not
giving Americans a secure retirement; it is giving them a retirement
that supports the Biden administration's environmental agenda. The
Biden administration is apparently happy to let your retirement money
suffer as long as the investments are advancing its Green New Deal
goals.
The very idea that the government is encouraging fiduciaries to
consider anything but maximizing a return on Americans' retirement
investments is outrageous.
I am very pleased to join all of my Republican colleagues on Senator
Braun's resolution to overturn this rule.
I also reintroduced legislation earlier this week that would require
Federal financial regulators, like the Securities and Exchange
Commission, to estimate the impact their rules would have on gas, food,
and energy prices, and prevent them from imposing any rule that would
drive up these prices when the economy is struggling with high
inflation, which gets to the heart of the matter here, and that is the
impact the President's ESG rules are going to have on hard-working
Americans.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the government has any
business using financial regulation to advance its environmental
agenda, the fact of the matter is that choking off investment to the
oil and gas industries could seriously impair our oil and gas supply.
And that would mean two things: higher prices for Americans and a less
reliable supply of energy. And that is a big problem.
Americans have had a tough 2 years in the Biden economy. The last
thing they need is higher energy bills for the long term, and the last
thing our country needs is a less reliable energy supply that forces us
to rely on foreign energy sources or forces Americans to deal with
regular blackouts and other supply problems.
President Biden talks about building an economy that works for
working families. Unfortunately, so far, his policies have pretty much
succeeded in doing just the opposite. And if the President continues to
pursue his radical ESG agenda, working families, once again, will be
the ones who pay the price.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lujan). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Kansas.
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