Endless Frontier Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, in a moment I will propound a unanimous consent request. Before I do, I want to make some brief remarks.

Right now, gas stations all over the eastern seaboard are suffering from a week-long gas shortage that has left thousands of stations completely out of gas. What we have seen is reminiscent of the 1970s, when Americans had to sit in long lines to fill their cars with gas.

Why are we experiencing this crisis? Because Russian hackers attacked the Colonial Pipeline, which had to shut down operations on May 7.

What is the reward Russia gets for attacking our infrastructure? Well, on the topic of Russia, just yesterday, President Biden doubled down on what is becoming a consistent ``soft on Russia'' position from the Biden administration, making the decision to disregard bipartisan legislation that passed through this body seeking to shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Putin is desperately trying to complete between Russia and Germany.

That pipeline had been shut down. We had succeeded in a bipartisan victory, stopping that pipeline, but, sadly, Putin resumed building the pipeline shortly after Joe Biden was elected. Yesterday, President Biden made the decision to refuse to enforce the bipartisan sanctions on the company building the pipeline for Putin.

If that wasn't enough, it is clear the Biden administration does know how to shut down pipelines--the Keystone Pipeline. His first day in office, Joe Biden signed an Executive order shutting down the Keystone Pipeline, destroying 11,000 jobs, including 8,000 union jobs--all destroyed by the Biden-Harris administration. For whatever reason, the Biden-Harris administration seems to have a philosophy that American pipelines and American jobs are bad, but Russian pipelines and Russian jobs are apparently good. And Russian hackers should get rewarded with Putin getting billions of dollars because Joe Biden refuses to stand up to Putin.

On the impact here at home of the Russian hacking, Colonial Pipeline transports 100 million gallons of fuel all over the east coast every day. It is responsible for transporting 45 percent of the fuel on the east coast, running from Texas to New Jersey.

The Colonial Pipeline is a critical piece of infrastructure, and when it shut down, it gravely disrupted the daily lives of millions of Americans--fuel for cars, for aviation fuel, for heating homes, all completely shut down. I am standing here today because one thing this crisis has shown us is that we need to diversify how we transport energy in this country so that if our critical infrastructure is attacked again--and we know it is going to be attacked again--that we have other reliable ways to transport energy.

One way to strengthen redundancy and to strengthen our ability to make it through another attack is to allow liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to be transported by rail.

Last year, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration finalized a rule allowing the safe transportation of LNG by rail. What this rule does is enable natural gas that is used for transportation, that is used for generating electricity, for heating homes, for manufacturing, to be transported by railroad, which helps Americans in hard-to-reach areas access the fuel that they need. It also takes pressure off of other critical infrastructure to meet our energy needs.

Yet, now that Joe Biden is President and he has empowered officials in his administration who have a repeated and demonstrated hostility to American pipelines and American jobs and American energy independence, this rule is in jeopardy. When the Secretary of Transportation was before the Senate for confirmation, I repeatedly asked the Secretary to commit to maintaining the existing rule of allowing the safe transport of LNG by rail, and, repeatedly, the Secretary refused to make that commitment. The foolishness of that position is now evident to everyone as we have gas lines and skyrocketing gas prices on the east coast and throughout the country.

1012 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

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Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, as the Senator from Massachusetts knows, there is an existing rule that went through the ordinary process in finalizing the rule--the ordinary notice and comment process--that has been promulgated by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

The Senator from Massachusetts also knows the reality that accidents by rail are very rare. While we surely don't want to see any accidents occur or have disruptions in transporting LNG by rail, what we have seen by the cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline is that nothing is certain. There are risks to everything, but by taking precautions and diversifying our transportation methods for fuel, we make our energy industry more resilient to attacks and accidents when they, predictably, do happen in the future.

Furthermore, LNG is already transported by vessels and tanker trucks and has been for decades. Obviously, accidents can happen at sea or with tanker trucks, but that doesn't stop us from transporting LNG in those ways. Accidents on railroads are rare, and if we can transport LNG by sea and in tanker trucks on the road, we should also be able to transport it by rail, where it is safer and more efficient and more effective.

Lastly, to cope with the shutdown, the Department of Transportation granted waivers for hours-of-service requirements to truckdrivers and Jones Act waivers for vessels to continue to transport fuel to try to alleviate the shortage. That just underscores the need for LNG by rail as well.

Unfortunately, as Americans are standing in gas lines, the answer they are being given by Washington Democrats is, the challenges you are facing don't matter to the Democrats. What we have seen from this objection is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support higher gas prices--much higher gas prices that you will have to pay at the pumps. They understand that much higher gas prices fall disproportionately on low-income Americans and that they fall disproportionately on African Americans and Hispanics. The Biden-Harris Democrats are willing to jack up your gas prices, to make you wait in line, and to say, essentially, ``tough luck.'' They have no answers, but they are going to block getting energy for your home, for your vehicle, for your life, for your family.

As we stand here today with a crisis at our southern border, as we stand here today with a gas crisis and gas lines, as we stand here today with an inflation crisis on the verge of erupting, and as we stand here today with war in the Middle East, sadly, we are seeing a reprise of the 1970s--the same failed policies producing the same disastrous results--except, in the rerun, Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter 2.0 and Kamala Harris is Walter Mondale. The country, sadly, is paying the price for the extreme and failed policies, and we are just 4 months into it.

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