Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to commend my colleague from Wyoming Senator Barrasso, who has been a leader on so many of these issues, and Senator Cruz on his bill, this important piece of legislation that we are going to be voting on here in a couple hours. This Nord Stream 2 sanctions bill is not just about the immediate crisis in Ukraine, but this would be a continuation of long-term bipartisan American strategy as it deals with Russia, energy security, and American security. So I want to provide a little broader context to that bipartisan strategy and put this debate and vote that we are having here today into that context. The U.S. commitment to European security, as we all know, is ironclad. We fought two world wars and a cold war to protect our interests in a free and open Europe. We expanded NATO to secure those gains and to prevent Russia from ever building a new empire that could threaten us or our allies. As we all know, Russian power is not just a function of military power; to the contrary, Vladimir Putin and the Russians for decades have been using energy in terms of power and energy as a weapon. As a matter of fact, it is their weapon of choice in many instances in Europe. Let me provide a few recent examples. If you look at this map, one pipeline that is actually not depicted is the so-called Brotherhood Pipeline from Russia into Ukraine, and it goes into Europe.…”