Political Quotes

“I rise to oppose this amendment, and I want to tell my colleagues why. This amendment creates the illusion of solving our problem, while having very little political impact and likely doing more harm than good. It is a legitimate worry to consider the amount of U.S. oil under our lands that goes and is shipped to China because in 2022, the United States did export over 83 million barrels of oil to China. That was a new record. It was a new record in part because 10 years ago, we didn't ship any oil overseas because we had a national security policy to keep U.S. oil here. But lobbying by the oil industry changed that policy, and so today, we are sending 83 million barrels of oil a year to China. This amendment doesn't really change that because--do you want to know how much of that comes from the SPR? Less than 2 million barrels, 1 to 2 percent. So you are still going to have 80 million-plus barrels of oil from the private sector being sent to China every year. ExxonMobil alone made $60 billion in profits last year, much of that off sales of oil to China. This amendment allows for the oil industry to keep making those billions off of selling oil to China, only stripping out sales from the SPR. That is a great deal for the oil industry, but it gets better. When President Biden sold oil from the SPR last year, it helped cut the cost of a gallon of gasoline by up to 30 cents. That hurt oil industry profits.…”