Biden Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today, as I have done twice before over the past month, to sound the alarm about the new administration's attacks on American energy. Yet there is still more to talk about.

President Biden has continued this assault on American energy as well as the American economy. Now he is taking that attack further. He is taking the attack on energy around the world as well as attacking the needs for energy of a number of our allies around the world. President Biden signed an Executive order to cut off all loans for coal, oil, and gas projects in some of the poorest nations in the world.

Now, some of these nations are our friends that we work with and we try to help, and these are people who desperately need affordable energy, and they don't have it.

Democrats close to the administration have reported that what the administration and President Biden are trying to do is to ``isolate'' the Chinese Communist Party.

The Biden administration thinks that by refusing to make these loans to folks around the world, that the Chinese Communist Party will be shamed for using fossil fuels for energy and will shame the Communist Party of China for loans that they make to countries to develop coal- fired powerplants, natural gas plants, and other projects that use fossil fuel.

Let me tell you, the Chinese Communist Party will not be shamed. China has a totalitarian regime; China puts Uighurs in concentration camps. So I am not sure what makes President Biden and his administration think that the Chinese Communist Party will be ashamed of using an affordable reliable source of energy--coal.

In reality, President Biden, by this Executive order, is giving China a gift. President Biden is giving China another advantage on the world stage and putting ourselves at a disadvantage, if you think about it.

If the United States and those that we fund through the World Bank refuse to provide loans to those countries to build the powerplants that they need, that is going to leave a vacuum. They are going to need to use the resources that they have--if they have plenty of coal or natural gas--and the Chinese Communist Party is going to come in and make the loan.

China already funds 7 out of 10 new coal plants around the world, and thanks to President Biden's misguided effort, that is likely soon going to be close to 10 out of 10.

Just like President Biden's other energy orders, this new policy will make China stronger. It will make America weaker. China will have more influence, and the United States will have less.

Now, this order is not going to hurt China at all. The people whom it will hurt are those who look to the United States for help and for friendship. It is going to especially hurt the 840 million people around the world who don't have access to electricity today.

Developing countries desperately need the electricity. They need it to be affordable. They need it to be reliable. So if you help developing countries in terms of helping them get a stable supply of energy, it is one of the best things we can do to help people around the world in their fight against poverty.

Many parts of the world, countries with abundant energy resources, just need our help and turn to us for our help so they can use the resources that they have.

And let me give you a good example, Madam President, because you and I have traveled to various places around the world and had a chance to see men and women in uniform and thank them for their services, as we have done, and gone to battlefields, as we have had family members who have served in the military and defended this country and our freedoms. And it has been a pleasure to be able to do that with you and share that with your family because of our united heritage of fighting or our family history of fighting for the country.

So a good example of what I am talking about is Kosovo. I have been there on three separate occasions specifically to visit members of our troops--the men and women in uniform, people from Wyoming who are serving in Kosovo. I have been there three separate times. I was there in 2019, was there previously for Thanksgiving, was there on Easter Sunday one time to be with the troops.

Well, Kosovo is one of the poorest nations in Europe, but it has vast energy resources. Despite being physically smaller than the State of Connecticut, Kosovo has the fifth largest reserves of coal in the world: small geography, massive resources of coal.

So the World Bank has cut off Kosovo's funding for a new state-of- the-art coal-fired powerplant. They have old coal-fired powerplants. They are burning coal right now.

I have talked to the leaders of the country, and they say: We need to build a new coal-fired powerplant. We need to borrow the money to do it.

Well, the World Bank has said it is only going to support new energy projects from renewable sources. So this is what Kosovo's Minister of Economic Development is saying. He said: ``In a poor country [like] Kosovo . . . we don't have the luxury . . .''--the luxury of focusing only on renewable sources when they don't have that much access to renewable energy. The wind doesn't blow that much; in terms of sunny days, not at all during the winter, and they have this incredible resource of coal.

Well, the Minister of Economic Development is absolutely correct-- because I have been there in the spring; I have been there in the winter; I have been there different times throughout the year. Developing countries cannot afford the elitist environmental agendas of Presidents who become climate elitists, especially those being put in charge of those issues, former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Let me repeat myself so--I want to just make this absolutely clear: We, the United States, have peacekeeping troops in the country of Kosovo. We have them right there in Kosovo. And we, the United States, are driving the Government of Kosovo into the clutches of the Communist Chinese Party because of a holier-than-thou attitude of the climate alarmists in the White House.

So we pay to put our troops on the ground, and then we say: Go to China if you need help providing power to your country.

People need affordable, reliable energy. Traditional energy projects are still the most affordable, still the most reliable.

If we really care about the people in developing countries, then we ought to help them turn on the lights. So I urge the Biden administration to reverse course, to rethink this, to look at all the implications of the decisions they are making.

We need to stop this senseless attack on energy jobs. We need to stop this reckless attack on developing nations. We need to stop pushing our allies into the waiting arms of the Chinese Communist Party.

The American people and our friends around the world--we are better than what we are getting right now from this administration, and we need to reverse course.

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