Scalise: Joe Biden Wants to Attack American Energy

“Today we're talking about how we can help those families who are struggling. And I rise in strong support of H. Res. 987 by [Rep.] Newhouse and a number of other colleagues because if the policies of the Biden Administration were working so well, as some try to claim, why are families furious that they're paying about 40% more when they go to the gas station to fill up their cars? Why are they furious that when they pay their household electricity bills – if they can afford to pay their household electricity bills – they're paying over 30% more? It's because from day one, when Joe Biden took the oath of office, he issued an all-out assault on American energy.

And for anybody who forgot or wants to glaze over it or say it didn't happen, or what are they talking about, the good news is we actually documented all of those specific actions in this resolution, Mr. Speaker. Because it's President Biden who took these actions; day one canceled the Keystone pipeline. Now what does that mean? That would have been about 11,000 American jobs. You know what it also would have meant? It would have meant about … 830,000 barrels of oil moving through the Keystone pipeline. Now, for the people that are trying to suggest that ‘Oh, that's a good thing, because there are some people that want to just eviscerate American fossil fuels.’ And President Biden has led that charge.

But let's be very clear, Mr. Speaker: President Biden's war on fossil fuels doesn't cover all oil and gas. It only covers American oil and gas. And maybe that's the most perplexing part of his failed policies that angers people. And people have figured this out because they've watched the President get on Air Force One, which by the way, still runs on jet fuel. They don't have solar panels on the wings of Air Force One. It's not a green plane. He got on Air Force One and flew to Saudi Arabia and begged them to produce more oil when he’s shutting down production in America. Do you know what Saudi told him? They said ‘no’ because they're a cartel. They're a monopoly. They're part of OPEC. They want higher prices; it benefits them to have higher prices. And so they told President Biden ‘no.’

But President Biden should have never even had to go to Saudi. Again, if President Biden is so against fossil fuels, if they're so immoral, as some on the left will suggest, then why is he getting on Air Force One – using fossil fuels – and begging Saudi to produce more? When he's shutting it down here. Again, he canceled lease sales in America. It's documented here, in the resolution we're voting on today. We didn't do that. Nobody else did it but Joe Biden. He's the one who canceled lease sales. President Obama actually had lease sales. President Trump had lease sales. And as my colleague from South Carolina pointed out, production today – if you want to brag about production, that's great. Because oil production today is a result of investments made five and ten years ago.

I represent parts of the Gulf of Mexico and some of the best oil reserves. The deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico – some of these rigs, if you go out to a platform in the Gulf, they can produce over 100,000 barrels a day. But you don't just plop one down and start producing 100,000 barrels today.

If you get a lease today, you have to pay millions of dollars for it – you can’t because Joe Biden cancels lease sales – but if you got a lease; you then have the luxury of going out and finding private investment because there's no government money, like the solar panels and the car batteries. That's private money, you might have to find $2 billion to go and fund the oil rig. You build the platform – it's a floating city; it's amazing American technology. And you put it out in the Gulf of Mexico, 60 miles offshore, maybe drilling 12,000 feet below the surface, and then you have to go back to the department and get more permits. You got to get permits for seismic, which you cannot get today, by the way. You have to get permits to put pipelines and subsurface infrastructure, which are almost impossible to get today because the Biden Administration doesn't want production. And so you do all of those things. And you invest all of those billions of dollars of private money. And if that well happens to produce, then maybe five to ten years later, it gets the first drop of oil that comes out in the ground and starts producing. Well again, that happened years ago. So I'm glad people are taking credit for it today.

It didn't happen today. It didn't happen when Joe Biden took the oath of office because Joe Biden took the steps to crush it – killing pipelines, killing leases on new production, killing the ability to get permits to go out and develop leases that you paid millions of dollars to the federal government for; that's what Joe Biden did. It's documented right here. But what he did worse, after he killed American production, if this was all about purity, and this was all about just protecting the world from fossil fuels, that would have been it. But that's not what it's about.

It's a war on American energy. Because again, he went to Saudi to beg them to produce more oil when he just did a virtual ban on LNG exports. Do you know who that benefited? It crushed American jobs here. You already saw some decimated jobs and canceled major, major multibillion-dollar projects in America. Do you know who it emboldens, what Joe Biden did? It emboldens Vladimir Putin. Putin is making billions of dollars a month – not a year, a month. Putin is making billions of dollars selling his oil and natural gas to world markets because of what Joe Biden has done. And because now that he has crushed a lot more things like LNG exports – which we were using here in America to help our friends around the world and Europe, we can help our allies. But if Biden gets his way, which so far he has, we can't export here. They still need energy in those other countries. So where's Europe getting it from? From Russia.

So on one hand, Joe Biden’s saying ‘Oh my god, Russia is evil,’ and he says we need you to help Ukraine. But then he's funding Putin's war effort, by giving Putin leverage and billions of dollars a month to finance the war against Ukraine. This is insanity. And it's raising costs on families here at home. The hard-working families of America are sick and tired of Joe Biden's failed energy policies, and they get it.

They know what he's done. People on this Floor can sit here and deny that any of this stuff happened, but it did. It's well documented in the resolution, point by point by point. I wish it was only one or two and you could go focus on those but it's over 60 actions he's taken to attack American energy. And again, only American energy. Venezuela is getting their ability to produce more. Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, who funds Hamas – Hamas who invaded and attacked barbarically, our great friend Israel. Where did they get that money? From Iran. And Joe Biden reduced sanctions against Iran so they could sell their oil on world markets.

Again, if it was about purity and getting rid of oil, then it would be for everybody. He wouldn't have lowered the sanctions against Iran, but he did. And so Iran could go make billions of dollars a month, like Putin’s making, because of Joe Biden's policies. But here in America, you can't get new leases, you're almost impossible to get permits. You can't do LNG exports. Because Joe Biden wants to attack American energy. We're sick and tired of it. The American people are sick and tired of it, and it's hurting the people that can least afford it. The lowest-income families are paying the price for this failed policy. It's got to end.

The bills we're bringing to the Floor this week point it out and end it. The Senate should take these bills up, everybody should vote for it. These should be bipartisan exercises. Everybody should stand up for American energy. When I look at that beautiful flag right behind the speaker, Madam Speaker. Why would we want to embolden Vladimir Putin with our energy policies when we have enough energy in America to crush Putin, to crush Iran, to crush Venezuela? OPEC would be irrelevant if we just produced more American energy and the only person standing in the way right now is Joe Biden. Let's end this madness. Let’s pass this legislation.”

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