Alan Lowenthal: “I thank Representative Huffman for his leadership on this very, very important bill. I would like to discuss briefly one…”

“I thank Representative Huffman for his leadership on this very, very important bill. I would like to discuss briefly one idea, and that is the idea that you hear around that if we are going to protect ANWR, that somehow is going to hurt our ability to become energy independent, that we cannot be energy independent unless we open up ANWR, and that right now, we have to really worry because we are going to become, by not opening ANWR, more beholden to the Russians, to Saudi Arabia. This is all going to be whether we open up ANWR or not? This is absolute nonsense. Republicans and this administration no longer care about energy independence. Let's be clear. They do not care about energy independence, and they haven't for years, ever since they voted to lift the oil export ban. For so many years, we said that we care about energy independence, and we are not going to export our oil and gas. If energy independence was the goal, we wouldn't be letting companies send American-produced oil all over the world, particularly when we are still importing from other countries, yet that is exactly what is happening today. We export over 3 million barrels a day. Yet at the same time, we are importing 7 million barrels a day. If oil development, what we are hearing today, is really about making America energy independent, instead of exporting those 3 million barrels, we could keep them here at home.…”