Fostering Undergraduate Talent By Unlocking Resources for Education Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know the American people, when they see what is happening in Washington, think that we fight all the time and we disagree about everything, but let me just agree with my friend, the democratic leader, on the issue of the nuisance of robocalls.
But as important as that is to our quality of life and to protecting vulnerable seniors and others who may be misled by some of these deceptive calls, some of the most basic functions of the Federal Government have not been fulfilled, like appropriating the money that is necessary to support our men and women in uniform. The bipartisan spending caps bill that we agreed to in August has been walked back by our Democratic friends, and we find ourselves with a lot of uncertainty here at the end of the year in terms of what the future may hold in terms of our ability to actually get anything done, things like pass a highway bill. That is one thing that Republicans and Democrats can all agree on, is our disdain for traffic and congestion.
That is one thing we can work on together. We could work together to bring down drug prices, particularly the out-of-pocket costs for consumers with high deductibles and high co-pays. We could pass USMCA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. All of these enjoy broad bipartisan support, but unfortunately, they are now all held captive by this impeachment mania which has stricken the House of Representatives, and it is scheduled to come over here to the Senate probably around the first of the year, depending on the schedule that Speaker Pelosi keeps in the House. Impeachment
So while there are plenty of good ideas out there about things that we can work on together on a bipartisan basis, we all know that the Senate and the Congress has limited bandwidth. We can't do everything we want to do. We need to prioritize. I would hope that our priorities would be the American people's priorities and not the political priorities here of partisans in Washington, DC, but unfortunately, it looks to me like the partisans are winning and the people are losing. We need to keep fighting against that. But that is where we are right now, particularly with Speaker Pelosi's announcement this morning that the House is now going to proceed to draft Articles of Impeachment, something that has only been done four times in our Nation's history. This will be the fourth time.
We know what the outcome is likely to be with the 67-vote threshold here in the Senate, and I think all of us in America listened or have been exposed to anyway the various arguments on both sides of the question, but I don't really, frankly, expect anything new to come out of this. A lot of this is rehashed over and over again ad nauseam in order to justify a partisan impeachment process less than 1 year before the next general election. I would think we would be a little bit cautious about 535 Members of Congress working here in the Nation's Capital reversing the decision made by more than 60 million Americans in the last Presidential election. That is a very sobering and serious matter indeed, but, unfortunately, I don't see this issue getting the kind of sober and serious consideration that the Founders contemplated or that the American people deserve. American Energy
Mr. President, on another topic, a number of our colleagues here in Washington have undertaken a radical approach when it comes to providing the energy that our country needs. As a matter of fact, if you think about it, it is because of the energy being produced by the oil and gas industry here in America today that the average price of gasoline is now probably roughly $2.50 per gallon.
In Austin, TX, where I live, you can drive from the airport to my home, and you can see gas prices at $2.15 a gallon. It is cheap relative to the historical prices. And you think about what that means in terms of consumers, regular, everyday working folks and families. It means they are able to spend money on other things that are important to them in their lives and not spend all of their income on filling up their gas tank. That is a huge, huge gift to the American people and consumers, but rather than focus on the benefits of what our innovative and entrepreneurial industry has done, we know that some of our friends here in Washington want to reorder the world in their own image. They say the goal is to completely eliminate the most affordable and reliable sources of energy. For what? Well, in pursuit of net zero emissions. I will talk more about that in a moment.
We remember earlier this year they introduced the Green New Deal-- arguably the most extreme energy and climate proposal this country has ever seen. The Green New Deal is chock-full of utopian ideas but completely devoid of any pragmatic plans to implement any of its pie- in-the-sky proposals. It puts a range of unrealistic environmental and socialist policies under one big green umbrella with an unaffordably high pricetag.
The best evidence of how extreme this proposal is, is when it came up for a vote in the Senate. Not a single Senator voted for it--that includes all of the cosponsors of the proposal. That is not exactly a profile in courage, to tell the American people this is the solution to our environmental and energy problems, and then when it comes up for a vote, you run and hide. Nobody voted for it. If this proposal were not so terrifying, it would be a terribly bad joke.
While that may be the most extreme proposal we have seen, it is not the only one. We know some of our Democratic colleagues in the House have tried to impose government mandates. That means more regulation, more taxation, more control by Washington, all in an effort to achieve net zero emissions by the year 2050. In some ways, 2050 seems like a long way off, and in other ways it doesn't seem a long way off, but in pursuit of programs that would address a problem in 2050, how about let's take care of the business that is sitting here right before us today first. We seem to have lost any sense of urgency in our most important priorities, like funding the government and funding the military.
On top of that, a number of our Democratic friends who are running for President claim we should ban fracking. I would really like to ask them if they even know what that is or how it works.
Some of them have said they also want to ban the export of crude oil. This month, for the first time in 70 years, America became a net exporter of oil. I will talk more about that in a moment.
Some are saying they even want to go so far as to ban the use of natural gas. Natural gas has been responsible for taking formerly coal- fired powerplants and putting them into a cleaner energy source, which has actually reduced emissions by a substantial amount, but, no, in pursuit of their pie-in-the-sky utopian dreams, the ideologues want to eliminate something that has been a very substantial improvement in terms of the reduction of emissions while providing affordable energy.
I think it is safe to say that we all agree--Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everybody--we should do what we can to protect our environment. In fact, we live here. We breathe the air. We drink the water. We should all be equally concerned about the environment.
I really think some of these proposals are nothing more than virtue signaling. They are not a solution to a problem. All of these folks are trying to paint the energy industry as the enemy in the process. Every good story needs a villain, and our friends on the left believe the energy industry that has provided that cheap gasoline so people can drive to work, take their kids to school, or go about their business is really the enemy, not our friend. Well, it is just not the case.
By the rhetoric you are hearing, you would think oil and gas companies have bankrupted the country, ruined our international alliances, and sent the entire globe into an energy famine. Well, that is not true. It is just the opposite of truth.
When you talk about global energy security, American oil and gas has reversed the tide of the energy landscape in our favor and supported our friends and allies around the world in important ways.
Our colleagues proposing these unworkable and unaffordable mandates would be wise to look at how the global energy landscape has changed over the last half century and consider the broader consequences of their proposal.
To understand the importance of American energy on the world stage, we need to rewind just a bit to the 1970s. At that time, the vast majority of the world's oil and gas came from the Middle East, giving these nations a great deal of power. In fact, you may remember back in 1980 President Jimmy Carter announced something called the Carter Doctrine. He said if any foreign power would block the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz, it would be an act of war. That is what Jimmy Carter said in 1980, such was our reliance on imported energy from the Middle East. Our country dealt with this situation, and we addressed it responsibly and effectively.
We know another indication of our dependence on imported energy is when the United States supported our friend and ally Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. OPEC, the organization of petroleum exported countries, primarily Middle East countries, banned the sale of crude oil to the United States. Those who are old enough to remember, remember that prices quadrupled, some States banned neon signs to cut down on energy use because they were worried about the energy that would be necessary to create that electricity, and a number of towns asked for citizens not to even put up Christmas lights. This was because our source of oil and gas was cut off from the Middle East, such was our dependence. Despite strong domestic production, we were still relying heavily on imports. Once that supply was cut off, we were caught flat-footed.
The Arab oil embargo brought to light the risk of our energy independence and underscored the need for America to do something about it. There was a consensus--has been a consensus--that we needed to grow our supplies here at home so we were less dependent on imports. So less than 2 years later, Congress, thinking we were doing a good thing, put a ban on export on American crude because we thought we needed it here and didn't want to export it abroad.
Over the next four decades, a lot has changed. Advancements in the energy sector, including hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, have dramatically increased the production of American energy. As I said, for the first time in 70 years, America has become a net exporter of oil. That is how dramatically this has turned around.
In the process, we have achieved our goal of reducing our reliance on imported energy from dangerous and unsettled regions of the world, like the Middle East, but pretty soon we found ourselves sitting on a gold mine, and it became clear it was time to lift the export ban. In 2015, after 40 years of no exports, that is what Congress did. We did so because we believed, No. 1, we had more than we could use here in America, but we also believed this would be a huge boon to our economy. That was part of the equation. Just as we were able to reduce our reliance on oil from unreliable and unstable regions of the world, we knew that by exporting the oil that America produced, we could help other countries--our friends and allies around the world--that were dangerously dependent on sources of energy from countries like Russia that is all too ready to use energy as a weapon. They say: Do what we say, and we will keep the energy and gas flowing. Do something we don't like, and we will shut you down.
In the not-so-distant past, many of our allies in Europe looked to Iran and Russia for their energy needs, and the Baltic States, all NATO allies, relied almost exclusively on Russia for their oil, gas, and electricity. Seven European countries depended on Russia for 80 percent of their gas, and on the whole, one-third of the gas Europe consumed came from Russia.
When our allies are looking to our adversaries for basic needs like heating, electricity, and fuel, that is a real problem. It is a strategic vulnerability not only for those countries but also for the United States.
Our friend John McCain had quite a sense of humor--those of us who knew him during his lifetime. He aptly described Russia as a gas station masquerading as a country. Russia's ability to export that energy to other countries was the lifeline for their country. I think Senator McCain hit the nail on the head, especially when Russia uses that energy as a weapon.
As I alluded, in 2009, we saw the vulnerability this created when Russia effectively turned the lights off in Ukraine. For almost 3 weeks, they shut down the energy supply. This affected at least 10 countries in Europe whose natural gas traveled through Ukraine.
Just as the United States realized how dangerous our foreign oil reliance was, our allies began to understand the implications of their dependency as well. Many of our friends in Europe have been working to diversify their energy supply, which is a good thing, and build strategic gas interconnectors between countries reliant on Russia for natural gas. Getting a diversity of sources is an insurance policy for those countries so Russia can't just cut off their energy supply.
Supplying our friends around the world with American oil and gas not only strengthens our security but it alleviates the power our adversaries, like Russia, hold in important regions of the world, like Europe.
In addition to increasing global security, American oil and gas has allowed us to provide affordable, plentiful, and reliable energy to countries struggling to provide power for their own citizens.
If you think about it, low-cost energy coming from America has the potential to be the greatest poverty reduction program in memory. For example, when I first traveled to India in 2004--if you drive from Delhi, the capital, to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is, you will drive across vast areas where the population is very poor. Huge swaths of that population lack access to things to cook their food with or electricity to light their homes. So what do they do? Well, they burn cow dung; they burn coal; they burn wood pellets or other high-emission fuel sources. By America agreeing to export the energy we have here-- the cleaner energy we have here--we are agreeing to help one of our closest friends and partners in the world and, in the process, help Prime Minister Modi and the leadership there lift more Indians out of this grinding poverty and relying on things like cow dung simply to cook their food.
Last year, we doubled the amount of LNG exported to India, and I dare say that the sky is the limit.
I think many of our Democratic colleagues should reflect back on the lessons of history before advocating a return to the 1970s when it comes to the way we approach American energy. I understand the importance of innovation in the energy sector to lower emissions, and I am all in, but rather than another government program, higher taxes, more regulation, or surrendering control of our freedom to Washington, DC, why don't we let the innovators, the entrepreneurs, come up with solutions? That is what has happened when it comes to American oil and gas. They came up with the answer, not Washington, DC, and we are all benefiting from the results.
When it comes to innovation, I have introduced legislation--and a number of our other colleagues have, too--to increase research dollars going into ways to lower emissions by looking at alternative ways to deal with energy production, like electricity. For example, there is a small natural gas-fired powerplant in La Porte, TX--which I visited with our friend Senator Collins from Maine--that emits zero carbon dioxide. That is a boon to the environment, and I think it also provides a solution to the oil and gas industry because what they do is pipe the CO
Here at home, it is easy to take dependable energy for granted. We do it all the time. We don't worry about having the energy to cook our dinner at night or refill our cars' gas tanks. We take that all for granted. But the truth is, in countless countries in the world and for the majority of the world, it is a completely different story.
For our friends who advocate these utopian ideas like the Green New Deal, I don't begrudge their desire to improve the environment, but I would ask them to be more pragmatic when it comes to trying to solve the problem. I would ask them: Are you really trying to solve a problem? If you are, we want to work with you to reduce emissions, but if your goal is to pursue some fantasy that will not work and we can't afford, count me out. If you want to solve the problem, count me in.
American energy is simply powering the world. It is strengthening global security and lifting millions of people out of poverty. We need to continue to harness the power of one of our country's greatest national assets.
I will conclude there. I will continue to share some of my thoughts on the importance of American energy on the Senate floor. It is a topic bigger than one floor speech, and it will hopefully remind and encourage all of the Members of the Senate to work toward energy abundance and help keep energy affordable, which will improve the standard of living and the quality of the lives of all Americans.
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