Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on March 2020
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech to the European Parliament this week, he made it clear that the time for long-winded negotiations is over. He said that in Ukraine, ``We're dealing with reality . . . we're dealing with real life.''
The footage coming out of Ukraine is absolutely horrifying. Putin has shocked the world with the level of brutality he is inflicting on civilians--men, women and precious children. But remember that none of this happened overnight. These last 3 months of bluster and buildup from Moscow were more than just idle threats. We saw it coming. And still, it is abundantly clear that Joe Biden and his advisers have not accepted this reality.
I have come to the floor more times than I can count to remind my colleagues how dangerous it is to remain entangled with governments controlled by dictators and mad men.
I am encouraged by the growing level of bipartisan awareness of this danger but discouraged by how long it has taken us to get there. It took the better part of 2 years for this body to rally around supply chain security.
I am sorry to say my Democratic colleagues' priorities were out of order during the height of the pandemic, even when it came to something as simple as holding Beijing accountable for unleashing COVID and destroying the global economy.
Too many people had fooled themselves into believing that diplomacy with China required dependence on China. And just like that, we found ourselves at the mercy of Xi Jinping.
It has taken all-out war in Ukraine for many of my colleagues to learn the same hard lesson about Vladimir Putin and our entanglement with Russia's state-controlled energy sector.
It is the same old story. What started out as interdependence has turned into a serious vulnerability. It is especially true for our European counterparts who bet everything on their gamble with Moscow and played right into Putin's hands.
Now, here we are. Russia is the world's largest gas depot; Europe is on the brink of an energy crisis; and the world is dipping into strategic petroleum reserves to avert chaos. Yes, we are all in this mess together, but we ought not to be. It did not have to be this way.
It is hard to believe that before Joe Biden took his oath of office, the United States of America was energy independent. That is correct. Go back and look at the numbers, 2019, 2020--energy independent. It took a lot of hard work, but, yes, we got there.
President Trump opened up all Federal lands for new oil and gas exploration. He also approved the Keystone XL Pipeline, which created thousands of jobs and would have brought energy production closer to home.
Trump also used sanctions against Russian energy companies when he needed to. He used them against Gazprom and the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, and also against Rosneft for helping Venezuela evade oil sanctions. It worked. The proof was right there in front of us. You could see it.
Then, along comes President Biden, and what did he choose to do? He had a choice. He made a decision. Yes, it was intentional. It was to satisfy the leftists who are running the Democratic Party.
So what did Joe Biden do? He crushed American energy. That is right. He suspended all of those oil and gas leases on Federal land. On the very first day of his administration, he took great pride in saying one of his first actions, one of the very first things that he did, was to kill the Keystone Pipeline, and then he blocked new energy infrastructure. And then, for good measure, he made those pesky Nord Stream 2 sanctions go away.
What had Vladimir Putin asked for? He wanted Nord Stream 2, no sanctions. Joe Biden gave it to him. He did not even put any conditions on it. None. Zip. Old buddy, old pal, this is what you wanted? I am going to give it to you. I will give you Nord Stream 2--at the same time locking down U.S. energy production.
For the Members of this Chamber who come from energy-producing States, if you are supporting President Biden in this endeavor, then you are supporting actions that disadvantage your State. Think about that--jobs, Keystone, having energy independence, which, as we are seeing, this has quite an impact on our Nation's security and on our global security.
Well, for all of those actions that stopped energy production, the Democratic Party loved him for it, of course. As I said, they are being run by the far-left wing. The environmental lobby? Oh, they loved and praised Joe Biden for this, and at first the Europeans kind of liked it also.
But then look where it got us. We fell out of energy independence and into a rat's nest of entanglements with one of the world's most belligerent dictators.
Russia is now our third largest supplier of crude oil. The EU gets around 40 percent of its gas imports and more than a quarter of its oil from Russia. Instead of using Keystone to send 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day to refiners in Nebraska and Texas, we depend on Russia to give us over 600,000 barrels per day.
Our German friends have finally questioned the wisdom of their failed energy scheme with Moscow, but they are still vulnerable. Everyone is vulnerable.
Putin is using energy as a weapon. This is not up for debate.
There was an interesting article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, revealing that Russia is still exporting its oil and natural gas throughout the world. Gazprom and Rosneft pull in around 30 percent of Russia's budget revenues. That is right--two companies. As I said, Russia, is a big oil depot, and they have an army. Thirty percent of the country's oil revenues are from Gazprom and Rosneft. And as of right now, they have been able to completely avoid major Western sanctions. Shameful.
They have managed to do this even though we know this gives Moscow some level of control over the rest of the global economy. These companies are Putin's economic lifeline and his best leverage against the West, his best leverage against Ukraine.
I am quoting from the Wall Street Journal article:
In recent months, Mr. Putin deployed Gazprom, the largest exporter of natural gas to the European market, as a geopolitical tool by throttling deliveries to the continent, European officials and analysts have said. That exacerbated an already-growing gas deficit and led to a surge in prices.
Both companies have always denied having a political agenda and insisted they are pursuing legitimate business interests, but in recent years European officials and foreign-policy experts have said Gazprom in particular has been acting as a foreign-policy instrument for the Russian government.
The article goes on to detail how Putin is financing his war against Ukraine with the help of these puppet corporations. Energy is his most powerful economic weapon, and the only way to neutralize it is to cut off the revenue stream.
Sanctions related to the SWIFT banking system and other financial punishments are important, but they are not going to be a silver bullet.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said that sanctions against the Russian energy sector would be too radical, but I would suggest that perhaps the Biden administration is not the best judge of what is too radical when it comes to regaining energy independence.
I would remind my Democratic colleagues that it was the Biden administration that decided that oil and gas leases on Federal lands were too radical; that the Keystone Pipeline was too radical; and that sanctions on Putin's pipeline to Western Europe, that was too radical.
Joe Biden didn't let energy independence slip away. He was and is the architect of its destruction.
When you go fill up your car, every time, $20, $25 more, Joe Biden did that. When you look at logistics costs and delivery fees that are coming to you because of the price of gas, you can thank Joe Biden that you are paying these higher delivery fees. When you look at the cost of packaging and products and it is costing you more, because energy affects inflation, this is what Joe Biden has done in 1 year--in 1 year.
We were energy independent. We were a net exporter of oil and gas--an energy exporter. And now look at where we are.
In this week's State of the Union Address, the President made no indication he intends to clean up the mess he has made. Why is that? It was intentional. This is what they intended to do to you, the American citizen. This is what they have done: Keystone, new pipeline infrastructure, returning us to having to ask OPEC--who, by the way, the OPEC nations, they are the third largest holder of U.S. debt.
You know, colleagues, this makes no sense. When you could be exporting energy, but you are importing it from people who do not wish us well, from Russia--from Russia--who is using those proceeds to carry out this war in Ukraine, this makes no sense. It is why the President does not intend to clean up this mess.
No, the climate-obsessed Biden administration is going to drag the country into a future defined by many of the same unsustainable green energy policies that threw Europe into chaos. They would rather buy Russian oil and fund a war in Ukraine than produce oil here in the USA.
This is a policy that defies logic.
The time for passing the buck is at an end. Sanctions on the Russian energy sector aren't radical; they are a means of survival, and we need to use them now.
This week, we saw some truly stunning demonstrations of solidarity with Ukraine. And on behalf of our common cause for freedom and liberty, the free world has said no to Putin's war. But if we don't back up those declarations, we are inviting more chaos.
This week, Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.N. reminded us of the cost of this willful blindness--and, yes, it is willful blindness. He said:
If we fail to respond now we will face much more than criticism. We will face oblivion.
It must not happen. Now it is time to act, time to help Ukraine, which is now paying the ultimate price for the freedom and security of itself and of the world.
Joe Biden won't be able to soft-talk his way out of this impending disaster that is unfolding right before our eyes.
I would implore all of my colleagues, each and every one who claims to be inspired by President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian freedom fighters, to follow their example. Do your duty and put yourselves between the American people and the evil that Putin will surely inflict on us if we don't use every option available at our disposal to stop him.
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