Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for next week.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the majority leader of the House.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, as we look at the schedule for next week, obviously, there are a lot of concerns about the continuing rising price of gasoline that we have been seeing for the last year and a half. President Biden talked about some things that he will do.

In regard to some of the long-term fixes to lower gas prices that have been filed, I know I have mentioned them to the majority leader in the past. H.R. 6858 is one of the bills that would address some of the real impediments to getting more oil and gas production here in the United States. There are a number of other bills, including six different bills that were filed by the Natural Resources Committee recently, that would address some of the other specific challenges that are holding back the ability for America to produce more oil and gas.

I would ask the gentleman if we could get those bills on the calendar so that we can move to actually address the problems that are holding back American oil and gas production, thus leading to higher prices.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, a number of problems with the way that the President's plan was described is that that is not what the President has done. The President has worked aggressively through many of his Federal agencies to, in fact, block the production of oil and gas.

And let me bring you back to candidate Barack Obama. There are a number of specific examples I am going to give the gentleman because the gentleman gave a number of specific examples that just don't comply with the facts, starting with the 9,000 leases, the thousands of acres that I know the----

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Mr. SCALISE. President has talked about and others have talked about that, frankly, don't tell the picture of what the President is also doing to ensure that you cannot develop on those lands. You cannot develop with those 9,000 leases.

And I will go back to candidate Joe Biden. This is what Joe Biden said when he was a candidate for President. ``No more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. It ends.''

That was Joe Biden as a candidate. The problem is he continued to take steps to carry through on that, starting with the 9,000 leases. If you have a lease to drill, it sounds really good until you realize that you still have to go through other steps to develop that. First of all, in some cases, you may actually go test wells, and you find out that they are not producing.

Thousands, by the way, of those in the 9,000 are not producing wells, meaning they are dry holes. There is no oil. Now, I don't know if you are going to fine a company because they are not drilling in an area where there is no oil, but maybe that is what the President is talking about, or maybe he doesn't understand the process of drilling for oil.

So then you go to some of the other areas, and I will give you section 1002 of ANWR, as an example. There needs to be seismic development where you go and test to see where the oil is.

We have a lot of advanced technology where, in the past, they might drill even more dry holes. Today, you can actually go and develop through seismic technology to know pretty well where the oil is, where the biggest reserves are, and then that is where you go and drill.

And so the Federal agencies are blocking the ability to do seismic activity, so you can't find out what is under the ground. So great. You have got a permit. You can't find out the seismic because the Biden administration is blocking it, so you can't make the multibillion- dollar investment because you don't know what is under the ground where.

In other countries, they allow that to happen. These companies are making investments, by the way. They are just not making the investment in America because they can't get cooperation from the regulating agencies because the regulating agencies don't want them to drill. Because, again, President Joe Biden as a candidate said, ``There will be no more drilling. . . . No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. It ends.'' And then he directed his agencies to do it.

Another example that has been brought up just the other day, less than a week ago. Again, we are talking about prices hovering in the $100 range. Raiding, in the short term, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve actually makes our country less safe because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there to be a safety net. If there is a national crisis somewhere, you can rely on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to get you through the next few weeks while you are working on a supply chain issue. That is not what is going on. The President is just raiding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to cover up for his failed policy.

And so if you look at what he just did the other day, President Biden's Securities and Exchange Commission just put out a whole new set of rules and regulations to make it hard, not just for oil and gas companies, but any other company to use fossil fuels.

Again, he has talked about this publicly. He wants to move away from fossil fuels. The problem is, he is telling his regulatory agencies to go make it incredibly difficult and more expensive to use fossil fuels. In his budget just earlier this week, he proposed $45 billion in new taxes on oil and gas in America.

Now, I know he has been, in the past, begging Putin to produce more. He is begging Venezuela, other dictators, Iran, to produce more oil. He is not proposing to raise their taxes. He is proposing to raise the tax on oil and gas produced in the American to the tune of $45 billion in his budget he just released Monday.

That would mean higher gas prices. But what it also does is it tells the oil and gas companies, don't drill in America because that is what President Biden as candidate said, No more drilling, period. It ends.

Then the SEC continued to do other things; this ESG movement where they are trying to get the big oil and gas companies to not drill for oil. So you are an oil and gas company, you are Exxon, and they are pushing to try to get those companies to separate into two different entities so that they can cut off financing for oil and gas development projects. They are doing it right now.

We have got a number of bills to fix this. And as the gentleman talks about, we want to do these things. We want to open it up. Except if you are saying on one hand, I am going to build this road, and I don't know why you are not driving down the road. But on the other hand, you have got people barricading the road, and then you say, look, nobody's using the road, so why even bother. You know, fine them for not using the road. And then you go look at the on-ramp, and you find out that they have put 10 barricades in front of the on-ramp so you can't get on the road.

That is what President Biden has done to oil and gas drilling in America. He has actually failed to comply with the law on the requirements that he conduct lease sales that he has not conducted which the law requires him to do. There are actually lawsuits that we have won in court, and he continues to obfuscate those laws.

So there is a bill called the Restore Onshore Energy Production Act. It immediately resumes oil and gas lease sales and requires quarterly lease sales in each State with an oil and gas program. That is something the President should be doing if he wanted to actually lower the cost of gasoline and produce in America, he would be doing, but he won't do it. So this bill would require him to do it. I would love us to bring that bill up.

And, again, if the gentleman says, Hey, why don't we produce on those 9,000 leases? This would actually help the ones that aren't dry holes where companies are trying to find out how they can go and drill, but they are being blocked by President Biden's different regulatory agencies. This would remove some of those roadblocks.

The Strategy to Secure Offshore Energy Act would actually require the publication of the 5-year plan for offshore oil and gas lease sales and require timelines for developing subsequent leasing plans. That is supposed to be done under law. The President's not doing it. This would require he do it.

The Energy Permitting Certainty Act requires the Department of the Interior to process applications for permits to drill under a valid lease, regardless of any unrelated civil actions where some of these groups use other laws like the Endangered Species Act to block drilling, again, saying there are leases. Why aren't you using them?

President Biden is saying, We are going to fine you for not using them as he is using his other agencies to stop them from using the leases.

You have got EPA over here and the Department of the Interior over there. You have got the SEC over there, all putting up roadblocks to the roadway, and then the President says, Look, there are no cars on the road. We are going to fine you for not using the road.

Well, how about you take the roadblocks off the on-ramp so that you can actually get on the road and drill? President Biden is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to appease the people who he promised, I am going to shut down drilling. Unfortunately, he is doing that. But then he is going and telling the public, I want them to drill. And in fact, I am going to fine them if they don't drill, while he is stopping them from drilling.

Again, other bills that we have to fix these problems that President Biden is putting up as roadblocks: The Securing American Energy and Investing in Reliancy Act requires the Department of the Interior to conduct all remaining offshore oil and gas leases in the current leasing plan and issue the leases, one, as a result of Lease Sale 257; additional impediments he has put in front of people that have already followed the rules, but he is still not letting them actually go do what they want to do.

They want to drill in America, and he is forcing them out of America. That is why he is begging foreign countries when he, himself, can remove the roadblocks that he put in place to stop drilling in America.

And there are more bills. There are a number of other bills. We will be happy to go over each of them with you.

But what we are saying is, there are very specific things President Biden has done to impede the ability for us to drill in America.

There are companies all across the country that know how to drill and can't drill in America. And instead of the President trying to use taglines and divert and talk about Putin and everybody else, when he is the one that is giving Putin leverage by shutting America off--and, again, this isn't accidental. He, as a candidate, said, ``No more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the gas industry to continue to drill, period. It ends.''

Unfortunately, it has ended, and we are trying to get it started up again by reversing the very things Joe Biden did to stop it. And we are asking for help here on this floor to address these very specific problems.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, for correction, that is not what I did. I actually went through how those 9,000 leases are being blocked by the President from being utilized properly.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, clearly the gentleman and I disagree on many of these items. Drilling in America is the cleanest way to produce oil in the world. If it is going to come from Russia, which I don't want, if it is going to come from any dictator, they actually emit more carbon than if you make it in America.

But I want to point out, as the gentleman talked about, this magical lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico and why no one bid on it, the reason is because it didn't happen. The Biden administration did not move forward with that lease sale. That is what we are trying to address with these bills.

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Mr. SCALISE. But the gentleman was saying it wasn't bid on; the oil companies didn't want to do it. They did. They wanted to invest in America. An environmental group went to block it and got a court to go along with them. The normal practice is the administration stands up for America and American policy and objects, and the Biden administration refused to challenge it in the courts because they didn't want the lease sale to go forward. And the lease sale did not go forward. That is why no one bid on it, because there was no lease sale.

We fix that with these pieces of legislation we would like to bring to the floor, but we will continue this discussion. Hopefully, we can resolve it. We will continue pushing for it.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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