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Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I am constantly struggling that when people say there is no consensus in Washington, DC, there is often consensus. It is just a question of a different means by which to achieve the goals and consensus. If I were to say that we would want to have increased national security, lower global greenhouse gas emissions, a booming economy, and energy security, everybody would agree. The difference is how we achieve those means. And so what this process is, is to give the American people the opportunity to judge what is the best set of policies that will allow us to achieve that which we are speaking of.

Clearly, there is a nexus, a connection--you put them all together-- between energy security, national security, the economy of our country and the economy of a family, and whether or not a country is lowering or increasing its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. This talk will be about that nexus between energy security, national security, global greenhouse gas emissions--how do we decrease them--and the economy of our country and the economy of a family.

Now, I am from Louisiana--I think that is pretty well known; the senior Senator from Louisiana--and we are privileged to host many of the facilities of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that connection between energy security and national security.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for those who do not know, is where we have salt domes full of oil, millions of barrels, so that if ever there is another embargo, like there was in 1973, where Middle Eastern countries were attempting to punish the United States, we would have enough in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve so that we could draw from and we could preserve our national security and our economic security-- again, that nexus between energy security, national security, and the economy of a country and the economy of a family.

President Biden has decided to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower the price of gasoline. I am all for lowering the price of gasoline, but if you think about it, drawing oil from a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is basically the same as pumping it out of the ground if it is in West Texas or off the coast of Louisiana. One is just oil that has been produced and put in a salt dome, and the other is being produced naturally.

So rather than increasing production on Federal lands, the President made the decision to just draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Unfortunately, we are now at the lowest level of reserves since 1984. To the degree--and it is a great degree--that our national security depends upon being energy independent, we have lowered our Reserve to the lowest since 1984, which is to say that we are less secure in terms of energy and therefore less secure in terms of our economy and less secure in terms of our national security.

The President needs a plan to refill that from domestically produced oil--period, end of story--and the swing production of that is going to be production on Federal lands, such as that off the coast of Louisiana.

Where does that leave us? Unfortunately, President Biden's energy plan is such that the Biden administration has set the record for the fewest oil leases on Federal lands in the first 19 months of his office. Both Presidents Obama and Trump approved over 10 times the number of leases as the Biden administration has over the same period.

So while Russia is attempting to blackmail the rest of the world by their energy production; where we have drained our Strategic Petroleum Reserve down to its lowest levels since 1984; where Europe is paying record prices for oil and natural gas, which may bring on a recession- depression there, which, of course, hurts our economy, this administration has had the fewest leases on record, and Obama and Trump had 10 times as many in the same period. This is hurting our energy security, which means it hurts our national security, which means it is going to hurt the economy of our country and the economy of a family.

My gosh, just ask what they are paying for their utility bills and what they are paying to fill up their tanks. Ask what they are paying at the grocery store, which is very dependent upon the supply of natural gas and oil in order to keep those prices lower. They would say they are hurting. This anti-energy policy has hurt across the board.

By the way, I think the rationale for not issuing those leases is that in some way, if the United States does not develop our own oil and gas resources, magically, global greenhouse gas emissions are going to decrease. That is the superstition of those who favor that policy-- except, unfortunately, logic. You can't ignore facts.

A national laboratory has said that if you are speaking about oil, that which has the lowest life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions is the oil produced off the coast of Louisiana, which is far lower than the oil that we import from other countries.

If you are really concerned about lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, it is the environmental standards that we use in our country to produce our national resources--and, by the way, creating our American jobs--that have the lowest life cycle carbon emissions.

So that completes our nexus. We spoke about energy security related to national security, which in turn creates better jobs and a better economy for us all and actually has the effect of lowering global greenhouse gas emissions. That is our nexus.

Unfortunately, this administration's policy is hurting American families, as they pay more through inflation; hurting our national security, as our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level, and therefore our energy security; and also contributing to increased global greenhouse gas emissions, as we have to import from countries without our environmental standards. Because we are unable to increase our production and supply, say Europe--they are burning coal instead of our oil and gas and, with that, increasing global greenhouse gas emissions.

There are some bright spots. On a bipartisan basis, the Congress just passed the Kigali Amendment, which recognizes--which is a form of hydrocarbons which were used in refrigerants. The use of this will lower global greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Congress just passed that. So other countries that persist in using older technology which increases global greenhouse gas emissions will be at a competitive disadvantage because Congress passed that. So in the midst of this kind of bad news--boy, it is just not working out the way it should--we actually have an example of how we can make it work better.

I am an advocate for a carbon border adjustment, not a carbon tax. I think carbon taxes are the wrong way to go. Let me explain. If we have a carbon border adjustment where the U.S. chemical industry, using our environmental standards, using natural gases of feedstock, everything we have done and invested in to lower global greenhouse gas emissions-- we are competing with countries in Asia, specifically China, which don't use those measures, which pollute far more than we, but because they don't use their environmental standards, they have a lower cost of manufacturing. We are competing against cheaper goods, but they are cheaper precisely because they are producing more global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Kigali Amendment tells us what to do. If we had a carbon border adjustment where we say that this is the carbon intensity of our goods that are produced, and if a country in Asia--say, specifically, China-- has a carbon emission profile that may be 5 to 10 times higher, if they want to import their goods, they would have to pay a fee based upon how their carbon intensity is greater than ours.

That is great. One, it is going to help us with our economy. Our workers who are losing their jobs to those in China because they don't enforce their environmental standards and we enforce ours and therefore our cost of production is higher--those jobs begin to return. It will be cheaper to produce here after all if China is forced to pay for the pollution they are putting into the atmosphere. It creates more jobs. That is good for Americans and good for our economy. It strengthens us relative to the Chinese, who are using their profits to build a bigger army. It is good for greenhouse gas emissions. Now China is actually incentivized to lower emissions as opposed to now, where they have no incentive to do anything but to increase their emissions.

So we begin to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions. That is good for our national security. The stronger our economy is and the relative weakness of the Chinese economy means that we are better able to invest relative to the Chinese, which means that we are better able to spread Western values as opposed to the Chinese values, which involve bribery, which involve corruption of government, which involve coercion. Just look at what has happened in Hong Kong if someone thinks the Chinese Communist Party is a better system of government. We are able to export our values and push back upon theirs.

So if we are trying to have a policy, as I said at the outset, which combines the best instincts of the right and the left, where we all want to have energy security, national security--we want to have a better, stronger economy for working Americans, and we want to lower global greenhouse gas emissions--the Kigali Amendment, which passed on a bipartisan basis, gives us an example of how to do that.

Let's make a strength of our environmental regulations, and let's make others pay for their ignoring those same regulations. In so doing, we begin to attract jobs back here for Americans to strengthen our economy, lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening our energy security, our economy, and therefore our national security.

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