Calling Attention to the Energy Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his leadership on this issue.

Madam Speaker, the Biden administration's war on domestic energy extends beyond canceling pipelines and infrastructure, suspending oil and natural gas leasing on Federal lands and waters, or opposing funding of construction of projects that could lower the cost of gas, diesel, or energy-derived fossil fuels and slow-walking liquified natural gas exports that could reduce Europe's dependence on Russia.

No, in fact, what most Americans do not understand is that the central feature of President Biden's anti-energy agenda is the weaponization of financial regulation to choke off capital to heroic American energy companies. And this agenda has been enabled by woke corporate leaders who have elevated a political ESG agenda ahead of returns for retail investors.

And we knew that the ESG agenda, the environmental social governance agenda, was prioritizing climate alarmism over and ahead of investor returns, over and ahead of affordable reliable energy.

But now as we see how Russia is using oil and gas exports to finance their illegal and brutal war against Ukraine, Americans can now see how the ESG agenda is compromising both American energy dominance and our national security.

The job of bank regulators is to ensure the safety and soundness of financial institutions and to promote financial stability. It is not to pick winners and losers in the credit markets or politicize the allocation of capital or solve climate change.

The central irony of the Biden administration's climate finance agenda is that it will neither promote financial stability nor help the environment.

On the contrary, it will actually destabilize the economy by destroying jobs, driving up energy costs, and severely reducing the reliability of our electric power grid.

It will also compromise efforts to combat climate change by starving innovative energy companies of the capital that they need to develop new technologies and processes to capture carbon, discover alternative uses for fossil fuels, harness the carbon cycle, and reduce emissions.

Biden's regulators say they want to assess how climate change may create risks to the financial system. But let's be honest. Biden has pledged a whole-of-government approach to ending support for fossil fuels. This is not about assessing risks for the financial system; it is about creating risks for our economy. It is about redirecting capital away from fossil energy and weaponizing regulations to discriminate against the most reliable, affordable energy we have.

The Federal Government should not be in the business of punishing heroic American energy companies, especially in a time of a national security crisis.

Unleash the power of the American innovative energy sector, not only to lower costs here at home, to restore American energy dominance, but to defend our allies in Europe to defend free people all over the country and to get rid of our overdependence on sources of energy from enemies of the United States.

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