[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 28, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1020-S1021]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Energy

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, it has been a month since the Biden 
administration announced its de facto ban on new export permits for 
America's abundant stores of natural gas; 1 month since the President 
chose to bring growth in a critical sector of our economy, with 
massive, global consequences, to a screeching halt.
  At the risk of understating things, the condemnations of President 
Biden's decision were swift and full-throated, and it is not hard to 
understand why. With the stroke of a pen, the President threatened the 
livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Americans, from Texas to 
Pennsylvania, who produce and transport natural gas.

[[Page S1021]]

  From the outset, the administration tried to cast the freeze as an 
effort to look out for American consumers, but the facts tell a 
different story. By the Energy Department's own analysis, the United 
States has more than enough natural gas to meet both domestic and 
export demand.
  In fact, if the Biden administration was really concerned about 
access to one of the Nation's most abundant, reliable, and affordable 
energy sources, they would release their stranglehold on domestic 
energy exploration and energy infrastructure. Millions of Americans 
live near massive natural gas reserves but can't reap the benefits 
because the President is afraid of upsetting climate activists by 
investing in safe and efficient energy infrastructure.
  Some of the most scathing criticism of the President's decision has 
come from his own former Democratic colleagues. As former Senator Mary 
Landrieu of Louisiana observed last month, the administration's so-
called ``pause'' on LNG export permits was like ``throwing a match in a 
bale of hay.''
  America's allies and partners already doubt our resolve to deter 
common adversaries, but now the world wonders why the Biden 
administration just handed them a gift.
  Just last week, a German state-owned energy company confirmed that it 
would actually keep an LNG supply contract with Putin. But it gets 
worse. The company had a contract in hand to begin purchasing American 
LNG instead until the administration announced its freeze last month. 
In other words, the President of the United States essentially told a 
NATO ally to keep on enriching the dictator responsible for the first 
major land war in Europe since 1945.
  To make matters worse, it is increasingly clear that President 
Biden's decision had another adversary's fingerprints all over it. 
Leftwing activists have been in the driver's seat of the President's 
energy policy since day one. That much is not news, but his top climate 
advisers taking private meetings with influencers on a Chinese-owned 
social media platform or the campaign to ban LNG permits being driven 
by a private foundation invested heavily in China's funds--that is 
news.
  LNG exports are one of the only areas of U.S.-China trade in which 
the PRC is reliant on the United States. Beijing would be all too happy 
for an excuse to buy less clean U.S. energy and more of what President 
Biden's Energy Secretary called ``the dirtiest form of natural gas on 
Earth''--Russian LNG. Well, it appears that President Biden has given 
our top strategic adversary precisely such an excuse.
  It is hard to understand the President's decision as anything other 
than a compulsive, shortsighted grab for more fleeting praise from his 
activist base. Clearly, it makes no strategic or economic sense. As one 
expert analyst and Deputy National Security Advisor under the previous 
administration put it, ``Our partners and allies are baffled and [our] 
adversaries are pleased. That's never a good formula.''