Scalise: Biden's Anti-American Energy Agenda Benefits Our Adversaries

Floor Speech

"A lot of work left to be done in these next few months; a lot of work left to be done today. If you think about the importance of this bill, it really focuses on the importance of smart energy policy, something that has been lacking -- devastatingly lacking -- in this country for the last three years. And it's a costly, costly consequence that American families are paying.

Having bad energy policy has resulted in higher energy costs for families, and especially low income families -- they are hit the hardest. When you see gas prices go higher, it hits lower income families the hardest. When you see the home heating costs because of bad LNG policy -- it affects everybody: It affects prices, commodities, things that you buy at the grocery store, because all of that is built in when you have higher energy costs. But it especially affects low income families when they have to decide, can they even pay their home heating costs in a cold winter. All these decisions are being made because Joe Biden has gone after American energy.

Joe Biden is not against all forms of energy. And let's be clear about this: What has this President done in his entire presidency over the last three years? Time and time again, Joe Biden goes after American energy. And when he says it's harder to drill for oil in America because he attacks the fossil fuel industry, he doesn't ban all oil. He just makes it harder to get permits in America.

So what that does is emboldens countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran, who are selling their oil on world markets and making billions and billions of dollars doing it. In fact, it helps them fund terrorist activities. When you think of Iran having more power, because the President eases sanctions on them, and then the President goes after domestic American oil and gas -- he emboldens countries like Iran, which then makes billions of dollars that they use to fund terrorism. There's a direct link: We all know that. And yet here you go with the President once again going after not all forms of energy, not all forms of LNG -- just American-made LNG by banning LNG exports in America.

So think about this: if you're making a product, and there used to be a day when we would encourage companies to make their products in America. We hear a lot of people giving speeches about "Buy American,' make it in America. But if you say make it in America, but you can make it anywhere in the world -- these are global commodities we're talking about -- but if you make it in America, we're going to ban you from selling it anywhere in the world. So if you make it somewhere else, if you make it in Iran, you can sell it anywhere on world markets. But if you make it in America, they're going to ban you from selling your product. And so what it does is have a stifling effect on production and exploration of energy in America. Not everywhere in the world, just in America and what that yields.

And for all my friends who love talking about the climate, nobody in the world makes energy cleaner and more efficient than the United States of America. I am sick and tired of these people who wake up every day and love bashing America, bashing American companies, bashing American products or American fossil fuels. As if, if you get rid of them, they just don't exist.

All that happens is if you get rid of American energy, you have to go get it from other countries. You have to bring it here on tankers -- which, by the way, have a much higher rate of failure than if you put it in a pipeline, which is much safer, or other means. This is lunacy. The policies that we're seeing out of this administration, to go after American energy, and it's costing families who are sick and tired of paying higher energy costs when they know they don't have to.

This is not the 1970s anymore, where you had lines at the pump. You could only get gasoline every other day based on your license plate number because we didn't have the technology to know where more energy was in America. Well, we've got all that today. We know what that technology is, and we know what the energy reserves of this country are.

We could provide all the energy for our country and all of our allies around the world. And by the way, we lowered emissions when we did that. Interestingly, they don't have any of this apply to countries like China who are building a coal plant every week with emissions through the roof. We do it cleaner and better than anywhere else in the world. And we should have policies that allow us to do even more production of American energy. That's what this bill does; that's not what the President does.

President Biden over and over again has attacked and gone after American energy, and people are sick and tired of it because they know nobody does it better. And they're sick and tired of having to see countries like Russia benefit, Iran's economy benefit, and other countries when it should be our economy that benefits.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this legislation. Let's pass it on. I commend Representative Pfluger for bringing this to the floor, and I hope that we actually get the policy right. This bill helps us do that."

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