Raúl Grijalva: “Today and tomorrow House Republicans are bringing the Strategic Production Response Act to the floor, a bill that forces…”

“Today and tomorrow House Republicans are bringing the Strategic Production Response Act to the floor, a bill that forces the administration to open up even more public lands and waters to drilling any time the President releases oils from the reserve in order to lower consumer gas prices. Now, what House Republicans are doing is effectively ending the President's authority to lower consumer gas prices while handing over our public lands and waters to Big Oil. You might wonder why Republicans are pushing legislation that clearly hurts the American people and consumers. To put it plainly, they are simply crossing another item off the wish list of Big Oil. It is a simple payback to the political campaign donors. This legislation is not needed. It is fabricated. It is based on a lie. Time after time, year after year, the fossil fuel industry lobbies to control and lock up more of our public lands and waters, and it often comes at the expense of surrounding environmental justice communities. I say it is built on a lie. There are 9,000 permits on public land effectively for Big Oil to be able to drill, access, and extract. There are 2,000 that are not being used. There are 2,000 permits on our oceans and waters that at this point 75 percent of those permits are not being used, which already affords them the opportunity to extract.…”