Energy Independence

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, we are closely monitoring events in the Middle East following that provocative and dangerous Iranian attack on Saudi energy facilities, which included the largest oil processing facility in the entire world.

As I said on Monday, Iran's reckless behavior is not just a threat to the region but to the entire global economy, and it must be met with swift consequences from the international community.

As the United States and our allies continue to learn more and weigh our options, there has already been one positive lesson that should not go unnoticed. While the attack has shaken global energy markets, to be sure, the United States is in a much better position to weather the storm than we might have been in past decades.

For years and years, an international attack of this magnitude would have been virtually guaranteed to roil the U.S. economy and send gas prices soaring for Americans at the pumps, but so far, this time around, analysts don't expect this event to yield the significant impacts we would have seen back in the seventies or even in the nineties. Why is that? The answer is three words: American domestic energy.

Over the last decade and often over the strenuous, strenuous objections of Democrats, our Nation has made incredible strides toward energy independence. We have explored new technologies, new methods, and new ways to fuel America's prosperity right here at home, and it is paying off big time. By 2015, our production had become so robust that I led the charge to lift the outdated ban on crude oil exports. Late last year, thanks in part to Republican policies, the United States became a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades.

Get this: Across all forms of energy, the Department of Energy projects that next year our Nation will export more energy than we import for the first time since 1953. Let me say that again. Thanks largely to Republican policies, our Nation is poised to become a net energy exporter for the first time since the Eisenhower administration.

That is huge progress, not just for our economy but, as we have just been reminded, for our national security as well. You would think the country would be united in celebration, but not everyone is happy. Oh, no. Last week, just days before this massive disruption in the Middle East, House Democrats sent us several bills designed to limit domestic energy development and literally tie America's hands. One of those bills would have shut off exploration in a small portion of ANWR in remote Alaska. They want to reverse something that had been sought for 40 years until Republicans secured it in 2017.

So, as far as I can tell from the bills the House keeps sending us, the socialists who are calling the shots over there have never seen a pipeline they didn't want to cancel. They have never seen a pipeline they didn't want to cancel, a responsible development they didn't want to kill, or a step toward American energy independence they didn't want to reverse.

Along with the Democratic House, this also seems to describe their party's Presidential candidates. Almost all of them have endorsed the radical idea of ending oil and gas exploration on Federal lands not only offshore but onshore, too. Let me say that again. Almost all of them have endorsed the radical idea of ending oil and gas exploration on Federal lands, not only offshore but onshore, too. That is today's Democratic Party. This ideology has consequences for American prosperity, but it also weakens our Nation's footing in the world.

Just days after these Democratic votes, we were offered a sobering reminder of just how important American energy really is.

So here is the good news: This Republican Senate is on the job, and we won't let Democrats take us backward. We won't let them reduce our prosperity or make us more vulnerable to overseas chaos. Republicans will keep working to help our Nation thrive.

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