[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 27 (Monday, February 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S807-S808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Energy

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last week, the Senate voted to confirm 
Chris Wright as President Trump's Secretary of Energy.
  The United States has been blessed with incredible natural resources, 
and it is something, frankly, that it seems like President Biden sought 
to deny the American people the benefits of that endowment with vast 
natural resources. And President Trump is going to reverse those 
policies and make sure we take full advantage of it for many reasons.
  I was proud to support Secretary Wright's nomination, and I can't 
think of a better candidate to oversee the implementation of one of 
President Trump's key campaign promises: to unleash American energy in 
a new golden age of prosperity.
  Under 4 years of the Biden administration, Americans suffered from 
burdensome energy prices resulting from his backward approach to energy 
policy. We know that inflation was part of what was driving those high 
energy prices, but also the refusal to take advantage of what God has 
given us in terms of natural resources. From day one, President Biden 
prioritized the view of climate radicals, while the interests of Texas 
families and our national security were apparently an afterthought.
  His first action was to revoke the permits for the construction of 
the Keystone XL Pipeline, a project that would have allowed us to 
transport crude oil from Canada to refineries in the Midwestern United 
States. Because the pipeline was not built on a timely basis, it didn't 
mean the crude didn't come. It meant it was put into railroad cars and 
shipped in a way that was, frankly, not as safe and, certainly, not as 
efficient as a pipeline would be.
  And, in 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, and 
while this law did nothing to reduce inflation, it did create massive 
subsidies for electric vehicles, most of which average working American 
families can't afford to buy. But it is the car of choice for many 
high-income coastal elites.
  But it wasn't enough to just subsidize electric vehicles. In 2024, 
the Biden administration went further in finalizing a rule requiring--
requiring--two-thirds

[[Page S808]]

of new cars on the market to be electric or hybrid by 2032. The Biden 
administration made clear that their end game was to end gas-powered 
cars.
  Now, most Americans who buy a car keep it for an average of about 10 
years, and President Biden basically wanted to force them into buying 
something that was not their preference but was going to be subsidized 
by hard-working families--again, a vehicle that many of them could not 
themselves afford. It is hard to see this as anything but an affront to 
those hard-working families back home in Texas or Alabama or anywhere 
else in the country.
  It is not just the cost that we are talking about here. President 
Biden's press for fast adoption of electric vehicles was a gift to our 
greatest strategic adversary. That is because China controls the supply 
chains for a majority of the critical minerals required to produce EV 
batteries. Seventy-five percent of lithium-ion batteries, 70 percent of 
cathode, and 85 percent of anode production capacity required for EV 
batteries, as well as 50 percent of the processing facilities for 
lithium, cobalt, and graphite, are all located in China.
  On the other hand, the United States produces virtually none of these 
critical minerals and certainly does not process them, which is 
admittedly a very difficult and sometimes dirty process. But in China, 
they process 90 percent of the world's critical minerals, and, frankly, 
they don't care too much about the consequences.
  But President Biden's insistence on this rapid transition from gas-
powered vehicles to electric vehicles put our national security 
concerns and working families in the backseat to Xi Jinping and the 
climate radicals. But he didn't stop with electric vehicles.
  Last January, President Biden issued a pause on all American exports 
of liquified natural gas in order to conduct a study on the 
environmental impact. Well, I can tell him what a study has shown--what 
experience has shown is that natural gas has driven down the number of 
carbon emissions that previously occurred because of the broad use of 
coal. So natural gas is really a much cleaner source of energy.
  Of course, this pause on exports had major repercussions in Texas, 
which is one of the leaders of the LNG industry.
  A 2023 study from the National Association of Manufacturers found 
that liquefied natural gas contributes $43.8 billion to our GDP. It 
supports more than 200,000 jobs and generates $11 billion in Federal, 
State, and local tax revenue. In Texas alone, the oil and gas industry 
specifically supported more than 178,000 direct and indirect jobs in 
2023 and purchased nearly $100 billion of U.S. goods and services.
  But President Biden's pause on exports was not the only time the 
Biden administration chose to pick a fight with Texas over energy.
  Last fall, the DC Circuit Court issued a ruling that revoked a permit 
for the LNG export terminal at the Port of Brownsville. This export 
terminal and related projects had already been approved by the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission.
  Just one of the projects affected by this ruling would have created 
6,000 jobs and more than $18 billion of investments in South Texas.
  But the DC Circuit sent them back to the drawing board, insisting 
that they needed to ``adequately consider the environmental justice 
impact'' of these developments.
  These were for projects that had already been approved by the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission.
  Of course, we already know that liquefied natural gas is one of the 
cleanest sources of energy, and of all the places in the world to 
source LNG, the United States of America has the highest standards. But 
environmental considerations aside, this war on American energy exports 
is in direct conflict with our national security priorities.
  Prior to the pause on LNG, the United States was supplying energy to 
our European allies. This, of course, allowed them to rely far less on 
Russian energy sources to keep the lights on and keep their houses 
warm. By turning off our LNG spigot, President Biden sent a gift to 
Vladimir Putin in the form of another source of revenue. Of course, it 
is the revenue that comes from the sale of energy in Russia that Putin 
uses to fund his war machine, which has resulted in the deaths of 
hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.
  President Biden's energy agenda put Texas workers and their families 
and our national security last, choosing instead to bend a knee to 
foreign adversaries and to radical climate activists.
  But, thankfully, that is not where the story ends. President Trump 
and Secretary Wright are now at the helm, and President Trump has lost 
no time in righting the ship to put American consumers and our national 
security first. President Trump is already off to the races to unleash 
a golden age of energy dominance in a number of important ways.
  On the first day of his Presidency, he reversed President Biden's 
disastrous LNG pause. This will allow our allies access to the oil and 
natural gas that come from Texas projects in the Gulf of America rather 
than relying on our adversaries.
  Furthermore, it is not just Texans and our European allies that can 
benefit from President Trump and Secretary Wright's agenda; by 
reforming the permitting process, we can make sure everyone within the 
United States has access to our abundant domestic energy supplies. And 
it will bring prices down, as President Trump has said is important in 
his fight against 40-year high inflation under the previous 
administration.
  Unfortunately, some of our New England States--notably States like 
Maine and Massachusetts--are still reliant on foreign fuel, and that is 
because of the lack of pipelines that would take the LNG and transport 
it up into that part of the United States.
  Due to stringent shipping requirements from the Jones Act, it is more 
costly to transport natural gas from the Gulf of America to New England 
than it is for these States to import fuel from foreign countries. The 
Jones Act was intended to protect U.S. shipping, but in this case, it 
has the unintended effect of decreasing our energy independence. I have 
no doubt that commonsense permitting reforms can right this wrong.
  I look forward to working with President Trump and his administration 
to unleash American energy through an ``all of the above'' approach so 
that Texas and the Gulf of America can once again supply the Nation and 
the world with reliable, affordable energy.
  The Biden administration's energy policy has lined the pockets of 
America's adversaries to appease climate radicals while hard-working 
Americans were stuck with the check. But President Trump has promised a 
golden, new age, and I look forward to making Texas and America the 
center of that.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.