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Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, it is so interesting being home for July 4 and talking with Tennesseans, and it sounds like Senator Ernst heard some of the same things from her constituents there in Iowa.
But what came up a lot in our conversations was the feeling and the awareness that the Democrats and the media have spent the last few months trying to convince the American people that oil companies are to blame for Biden's energy crisis.
At one point, they even tried to blame the people running the local gas stations, all the moms and pops, but Tennesseans know whose fault it is. Tennesseans are smart. They are watching very closely. And they know that President Biden became responsible for their pain the moment he chose a radical, environmental agenda over the fully realized vision of American energy independence.
That is right, we were energy independent the day he took office.
So President Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. He canceled leases and energy infrastructure, and he got behind dozens of regulations that have made it almost impossible for American energy producers to do their job.
At the time, Democrats claimed this was all for the greater good. It is temporary. It is transitioning to the liberal world order. But I think any reasonable person would agree that what has happened is things have gotten worse--terribly worse.
If you don't want to take my word for it, talk to the local leaders who are responsible for keeping the lights on in their communities. City budgets are stretched thin. School budgets aren't doing any better. Parents want to know if the buses will keep running and what will happen in August if the schools can't afford to turn the air- conditioning on. Everyone wants to know what will happen to public transportation, to emergency services, and to law enforcement if the price of a gallon of gas gets too expensive. They have no idea how far the Biden administration will allow this to go, and that is what concerns them the most.
Joe Biden hasn't just failed ``we the people,'' he has sabotaged the pocketbooks of millions of Americans and given our adversaries a huge advantage.
The Democrats gambled on the Green New Deal. It is evident they lost. Their gas holiday was a gimmick, and that failed. Energy prices are through the roof, but they still pulled a million barrels of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and they sent it to communist China.
Now the President of the United States has gone hat in hand to Saudi Arabia so that he can beg for oil. He is even trying to cozy up to the Iranians with a new Iran nuclear deal, begging for oil. Our hard-fought energy independence is gone, along with our Nation's credibility on this issue.
The world is watching Joe Biden. They are watching the Biden blackouts that are really taking a toll on American energy and American consumers, and you and I both know that all the wrong people are seeing this as an opportunity to profit.
If the Biden administration continues to squander our country's resources, we will lose even more ground to the axis of evil. Russia still has a stranglehold on European energy. American supply chains are still hopelessly entangled with China. Iran is ready to steamroll Biden for that new nuclear deal. North Korea is deploying hackers to the West at an alarming rate. I don't think a Civilian Climate Corps has a chance in this match-up.
I would admonish the President to remember that the new axis of evil is playing by a different set of rules. Their only goal is to find our vulnerabilities and exploit them to try to take us down.
I would remind my Democratic colleagues that Biden's energy crisis is a vulnerability, and it is your duty to help lead the country out of it. Don't be complicit. Restart the Keystone Pipeline, open up those leases on Federal lands, get the regulators out of the way, and unleash American energy before it is too late.
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