Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my good friend, the gentleman from Kansas, for yielding and for this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to imagine an administration that goes out of its way to increase our dependency on an adversarial nation hell-bent on our demise here in the United States of America. That is precisely what is happening--all because the left hates oil and gas and fossil fuels. I represent a district that is the epicenter of energy in east Texas in the greater Houston region.

Communist China wishes nothing more than to see America burn to the ground, and Joe Biden's reckless demand for electric vehicles continues to give Beijing an ever-increasing advantage in seeing this quest through.

Let's look at some of the facts.

Nearly 80 percent of the world's cell manufacturing capacity for EV batteries is controlled by none other than Beijing, the People's Republic of China.

Mr. Speaker, 75 percent of the world's lithium-ion battery megafactories are in the People's Republic of China.

Mr. Speaker, 90 percent of graphite, the single largest mineral component of EV batteries, electric vehicle batteries, is refined in the People's Republic of China.

Yet, if increased reliance on China isn't alarming enough, let's look at how electric vehicles are faring on the home front.

Just a few weeks ago, in my own office, I had a number of car dealers from my great State of Texas visit to share the latest on EV--electric vehicle--sales. Given how much the Biden administration talks about EVs, you would think that they are selling like hotcakes. Big surprise, or maybe not, they are actually selling like $50,000 paperweights.

I recently saw a great line in The Wall Street Journal: ``You can subsidize a buyer into the auto showroom, but you can't make him buy.''

The truth is that dealers can't get EVs off their lots.

Texans don't want vehicles that they can't rely on. While I am a huge supporter of innovation, fully electric vehicles aren't ready for prime time, and forcing them on the American people will not change that reality.

By unilaterally mandating unrealistic emission standards for vehicles in an effort to shift markets, this administration has dealt serious damage to the entire automotive sector.

Unfortunately, even with this information, the White House would still force Americans to buy electric vehicles.

Out of concerns for our manufacturers, dealers, national security, and, more importantly, American families, it is time for this administration to return to reality. Fossil fuels are the only reliable energy source that we have. If we stop producing and using them, we will soon be bowing the knee to the demands of Communist China.

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