Legislative Program
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my friend and the House majority leader.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the confession about how many 60th birthdays he has shared. Here is to many more for you, but also for Bres.
As the gentleman points out, a fair and free press is vital to democracy. It is the First Amendment to our Constitution: freedom of speech and freedom of the press. While they might not report our press releases verbatim all the time--as we might like them to--they serve a vital purpose. Bres is one of those that we see in the halls, like the press that is around here making sure that the country knows what is happening here in the greatest democracy of the history of the world.
As a 60th birthday gift to him, I promise not to sing ``Happy Birthday'' to him. I wish Bres a happy birthday, and I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that update. As we celebrate Juneteenth next week, also right here in this House Chamber over 150 years ago is where the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was debated and passed. So history is made here on a regular basis. And then we celebrate the freedoms that result and continue as our Founders talked about to aspire towards a more perfect Nation so we will do that next week.
I do want to thank the gentleman because last week during this colloquy I know I asked my friend if we could bring the Supreme Court protection bill, the bill to make sure that Supreme Court Justices and their families get proper protection, as we were watching and saw a man arrested for trying to murder a Supreme Court Justice. Leader McCarthy, I know, urged that as well. So I appreciate that we got to bring that bill up, debate it, and quickly pass it to President Biden's desk where we can get that in place.
I would hope that the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, would start enforcing 18 U.S. Code 1507 to give protection properly as Federal laws dictate, but it is not being enforced at the homes of those Justices. But, again, I appreciate that we got a very overwhelming bipartisan vote on that bill this week.
Does the gentleman have anything to add before we talk about the schedule for next week?
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. I share those comments by the gentleman from Maryland.
As we look towards next week--we have had this conversation a number of times--one of the items I don't see on the agenda is an item to address the problem of high gas prices, and, of course, we have now crossed an average of more than $5 a gallon. It is a major burden for families, especially lower-income families who are being forced more and more to make those tough decisions of can they even afford to drive to work, and can they even afford to drive to see their doctor or to drive to the grocery store where they are paying maybe 20 percent more for some of the food items.
We have had a bill for over a month now, H.R. 6858, that would address these problems and allow us to actually have more control over our own energy production in America, to be able to drill in America for energy to lower the cost of gasoline, by confronting so many of the problems that this Biden administration has imposed that are making it hard for us to produce more energy in America to the point where you now have President Biden announcing that he is going to go to Saudi Arabia to beg them to produce more oil.
As we try to confront this challenge--and again, H.R. 6858 would allow us to do that--if you look at President Biden's proposed trip to Saudi Arabia, the President likes talking a lot about carbon footprints, carbon emissions, and global warming.
Why would the President get on Air Force One and fly 5,700 miles to Saudi Arabia to beg them to do something that we can do right here in America?
In fact, he could go less than 1,000 miles to Port Fourchon, Louisiana, in my district where they can produce hundreds of thousands of barrels a day in America which, by the way, because America has the best standards in the world, would emit less carbon than the oil produced in Saudi Arabia.
While the President will be flying over to Saudi Arabia, he won't know the answer he is going to get. They are an OPEC nation. They typically support a limited supply of oil because they want a higher price. So he doesn't know what the answer is going to be. He is going to fly 5,700 miles over and another 5,700 miles back to the United States. There are no solar panels on Air Force One, so that is going to be a lot of jet fuel and a lot of carbon emissions to do something that he could pick up the phone and call Port Fourchon. We would love to see him down there, but he can call them. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, the answer would be ``yes.''
They would say: Yes, we will produce more energy here in America.
But they are not allowed to right now because of limitations put in place by the Biden administration. So while we push to get this bill, H.R. 6858, brought forward, it really begs the question of first: What is the carbon footprint of President Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia?
But why even do this trip? Why go to Saudi Arabia and ask them to produce oil when we have it right here?
It is President Biden's policies that are stopping that oil from being produced, and, by the way, at a much lower carbon footprint than anything that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, or any of those countries would produce if it were their countries meeting the demands of our Nation and so many others.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman, hopefully, to see if we can get the bill scheduled for next week.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, if there is common ground we can find on the components of H.R. 6858, I would be happy to help facilitate that negotiation because there are a number of very specific items in that bill that address the shortfalls, the deficiencies, the inabilities to produce energy in America. The Keystone pipeline might be one of the more well known.
President Biden, on his first day in office, canceled the Keystone pipeline.
Of course, it is not moving forward because he canceled it. It would provide a vital supply of oil from our friends in Canada that we wouldn't need from other people.
But there are a number of other pipeline issues. No new pipelines have been approved in the country. You have to have an ability to move energy around the country if we are going to be able to produce our own.
If a conscious decision was made in the White House that they don't want any pipelines, because that impedes the ability to produce energy in America, it just means we have to import more of it from other countries. Whether it is Saudi Arabia, Russia, any of them that I would not want us to have to get it from, it is going to come in some form. It might be a tanker. It is going to get here, and it is going to have to be put on rail or an 18-wheeler if it can't be put in a pipeline.
Let's get more pipelines produced, LNG export facilities. There are multiple, at least four, LNG export facilities that are sitting on the desk over at the Department of Energy ready to go. These are multibillion-dollar, privately funded projects that can't move forward because they won't move, yes or no, on those requests that have been pending for over a year.
Obviously, you look at leases, not being able to develop your lease. If you are a farmer and you own land, you could talk about all the thousands of acres of land, but if you need a permit from the Federal Government to plant food and the Federal Government won't give you a permit to plant the food, then you can't use the land. The land is worthless.
You own leases on Federal or State lands, but the Federal Government, through President Biden, said you can't get permits to go and exercise that lease. Then the lease is worthless.
There has been a lot of talk by the White House about who to blame. By the way, I have never heard of President Biden pointing the finger at himself or looking in the mirror and going, is there something I can do? We have a list for him that he can do, and he won't.
But Joe Biden, as a candidate for President, has said things like this multiple times since being President: ``No more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period.'' That was Joe Biden.
Then, Joe Biden continued to carry out policies that followed through on those promises to kill drilling in America, and each step of the way, the price kept going up.
Prior to Putin's invasion--I know the President loves trying to blame Putin. Well in advance of Putin's invasion, the price of oil was going up. In fact, the President was--whatever terminology you want to use-- pleading with, begging, asking Putin to produce more oil prior to the invasion of Ukraine. That was who Joe Biden was asking back then as he was carrying out his promise, ``No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period.''
He only applied that, by the way, to America. He was asking other countries to drill. He was just saying you can't do it here. Putin said no, by the way.
In the meantime, Putin was making $700 million a day selling his oil to America and Europe during that period when President Biden was carrying out all the steps to stop drilling in America.
Then you fast forward. The price keeps going up. President Biden, again, doesn't look in the mirror.
The gentleman mentioned they blamed the pandemic. That didn't fly because that wasn't the case because people started getting out again, started going again.
Energy companies asked to start producing again and filed permit after permit application and got denied and denied and denied, so then the President blamed the oil and gas companies. They had hearings up here, brought in all the oil and gas companies.
Do you know what the oil and gas companies said under oath? They want to drill more, and they can't drill because of President Biden's policies. It is President Biden's policies stopping them from drilling.
Again, if the oil and gas companies or Putin were the reason that there was this inability, and President Biden, as he has done multiple times, blamed them, if they were the reason that they had this shortfall, he would continue to be blaming them. But he knew the public wasn't buying it because it wasn't them, so he just blames more people.
Then, he goes to price gouging. As the gentleman pointed out, there was a bill here on the House floor a few weeks ago to try to shift the blame over to price gouging, and the answer was to allow you to sue your local gas station if you didn't like the price of gas.
Well, none of us like the price of gas. Suing your gas station is only going to make the price higher. Obviously, that had no impact because that wasn't the reason. But that was the answer and the attempt to try to blame somebody else.
Then we moved forward, and it is all of these other issues-- refineries. This week, the White House started blaming refineries.
While the White House keeps throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to figure out if somebody else will take the blame, he is going to go to Saudi and ask them to help us lower the price. Saudi's ability to produce is irrelevant to the price if we produce in America because we have the ability to drive down that price because we are not an OPEC nation. We are not a monopoly. We are a free-market economy when the free market is allowed to operate.
But President Biden, through his promises--``No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period''--in essence, he took the free market ability for America to produce energy off the table, which means he gave that leverage to monopolies, to cartels. They are taking advantage of it because President Biden gave them that.
Instead of asking them to produce more when they are fine with the high price of oil, whether it is Brent, West Texas, it doesn't matter what it is. He has taken it off in America so that they can limit the supply.
Let's not limit the supply. Again, if it is about saving the planet, if it is about carbon emissions, why not produce more here? There is no country in the world that produces oil that does it cleaner or better than us.
If you take America off the table, as President Biden has done--``No more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore.'' That was Joe Biden. He took it off the table here. That means you are going to need oil from countries that emit more carbon to produce the same oil, so you get higher carbon emissions.
Again, that doesn't even count the carbon emissions that will occur when President Biden gets on Air Force One and flies over 5,700 miles to go have this conversation that he doesn't need to have because he can have that conversation right here in America at a place like Port Fourchon, where the answer would be yes, and it would be cleaner. And by the way, it would bring billions more dollars into America's Treasury. It would lower the price of gasoline. It would create more jobs in America.
Every answer says yes, except President Biden keeps saying no. We want to address it through this legislation, which would counter some of those many things that President Biden has done to turn off the spigots in America.
If we can work on ways to confront this, I would be more than happy to have that negotiation, and we could go through, offline, how to do that. That is why I continue to bring up this bill.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Just for clarification, the ranking member voted ``no'' on the bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. The 800,000 leases--and I know we talked about this before. You can have 800,000 leases, but when you need, then, permits to actually utilize the lease--so you have a lease to go and develop oil, but you need to drill. You need to do seismic. You need to build pipelines, infrastructure to move it. If you don't get those permits to actually utilize the leases, the leases are worthless. That is what H.R. 6858 addresses. We have been raising that issue for a long time. The lease is no good if you can't, then, use the lease.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Obviously, we will continue to debate this. Hopefully, we will debate it over H.R. 6858 where we can actually be talking about how we work together to solve the problem.
Of course, as the gentleman knows, Congress did come together, Republicans and Democrats, to give our friends in Ukraine the tools to go and push Putin out of much of Ukraine and, hopefully, all of Ukraine.
We will continue to stand with the incredibly strong, resilient people of Ukraine in standing up to Vladimir Putin.
We will, hopefully, have this debate further as we are talking about the legislation that we would like to bring.
Unless the gentleman has anything else--Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source