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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, last week, a U.S. company announced it had reached an agreement to begin exporting American liquefied natural gas to Ukraine for the first time. That is certainly good news for our friends on the frontlines of Russian aggression, for allies across Eastern Europe, and for the workers and producers behind some of America's most affordable and reliable energy.

Exporting American abundance is a win-win proposition, and it is one that our closest trading partners in Europe have increasingly recognized as an opportunity to offset their reliance on Russian gas.

But setting aside last week's good news, the Biden administration is still chronically confused about the role that affordable and abundant American energy can play as a geopolitical tool, a source of American leadership, and an engine of our own economy.

In a joint pledge issued 2 years ago, President Biden committed to help reduce Europe's reliance on Russian energy and increase global energy security. Then, a few lines later, he reiterated his commitment to the unenforceable virtue signals of the Paris climate deal.

Sometimes it seems that cognitive dissonance is the most powerful force in the universe.

Remember, the President who continues to insist he is serious about helping America's closest allies resist the predations of Putin's Russia is the same President who made stunning American energy development a day-one priority. He is the same one who decided not to intervene when he had a chance--before Russia's escalation in Ukraine-- to block the expansion of European reliance on Russian gas with the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. And, of course, this is the same President who earlier this year issued a de facto ban on new permitting for LNG export infrastructure that would make it harder for American producers to respond to demand for reliable alternatives to Russian or Iranian energy.

As I have discussed at length, Russia's escalation in Ukraine prompted some of our closest European allies to finally start investing seriously in their own defenses. It has also been an opportunity to rethink their dangerous overreliance on Russian energy.

Back in February, one German state-owned energy provider was in the process of switching from buying Russian gas to buying American gas instead, but the plan was stifled by the administration's decision to appease its activist base instead of reinforcing America's allies.

So last week brought good news. But here is the rub: This new commitment to Ukraine relies, in part, on the completion of a new LNG export facility that is stuck in the Biden administration's regulatory purgatory. And even as already permitted infrastructure comes online, producers who want to create new American jobs and expand their capacity to meet foreign demand are simply out of luck.

Since 2016, American LNG has been a remarkable success story. It had driven our economy to become a net energy exporter. And just last year, even in the shadow of the Biden administration's War on Energy, the United States was the world's largest LNG exporter.

But this year, Russia has overtaken the United States in gas exports to the European market, and it might have something to do with a ban one of our former Democratic colleagues, Mary Landrieu, described as ``throwing a match in a bale of hay.'' We might describe the President's ban as a tremendous missed opportunity, but that would undersell the predictably disastrous consequences.

In the face of a dangerous world, the administration's obsession with performative climate policy is taking meaningful levers of American power simply off the table. For 3\1/2\ years, the Biden administration has worked relentlessly to suffocate American energy production, both onshore and offshore. And when Senate Republicans offered amendments to restore some modicum of sanity to the system for permitting and leasing new energy development, every single Senate Democrat stood behind the administration and voted no.

The first and longest suffering victims of Washington Democrats' War on American Energy are the American people. Historic inflation has already made insuring a car or filling up the tank more than 50 percent more expensive on President Biden's watch. But his administration wants to compound the pain with regulations that would put entire sectors of our economy in an even more serious bind.

Back in March, the Biden administration finalized a rule on vehicle emissions that would give manufacturers of work trucks and commercial vehicles until 2032 to turn 40 percent of their new stock into zero-- zero--emission vehicles. In the case of the biggest long-haul tractor- trailers, this would effectively mean replacing a quarter of these vehicles with zero-emission vehicles that are not yet on the road. It doesn't take an expert to imagine the sort of shock waves this would send across America. Our economy simply cannot function without reliable large vehicles to get products to market--or the hard-working men and women who make a living driving them. We are talking about a rule that would supercharge inflation on delivery costs and shelf prices alike and a penalty that would hit hardest for those least able to afford it.

Unsurprisingly, this zeal for redtape extends beyond heavy-duty vehicles to every passenger car, SUV, and pickup truck. In 8 years, if the administration has its way, two of every three vehicles manufactured for American consumers will have to be electric vehicles.

Now, consumers have already made it abundantly clear that they don't want Washington bureaucrats telling them what car to drive, and major engines of our economy have joined together to take the Biden administration to court over all of this nonsense.

Folks in my home State of Kentucky are following this progress closely. I spoke recently with a car dealer from Richmond. When it comes to his livelihood, he doesn't mince any words. Here is what he had to say:

I don't want to be in court fighting a governmental agency. I just want to sell and service the cars and trucks that my customers want. . . . [R]ight now and for as long as I can see, my customers don't want vehicles that our government requires them to buy. They don't want vehicles that are not affordable, can't be reliably re-charged, and can't be depended upon to make the drive from Richmond to Lexington on a below zero midnight in January.

He also said:

The history and civics classes that I dearly loved did not prepare me for a country where executive action and career bureaucrats can create ``law'' and regulations that will put me out of business.

Boy, I can't top that. American workers and job creators are struggling to keep up with persistent--persistent--high prices, and all the Biden administration seems to be offering as consolation is more redtape.

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