Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, H.R. 21 is about strengthening the SPR by requiring any nonemergency use to be accompanied by a plan to produce American resources. By lowering the number from 10 percent to 0.1 percent, you essentially defeat the whole purpose of introducing the bill. To be quite frank, it wouldn't be worth the paper we are using to put it in front of Congress at this point in time. We should have a conversation about this because at any point in time we are going to blame, whether it is an invasion in the Ukraine or Big Oil or small oil or gas stations or American consumers or the climate crisis or all of those different things. The reality of this conversation is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is at the lowest rate it has been since 1983, is putting us at dangerous risk if any kind of weather event happens in the Chair's home State of Texas or Florida or the Gulf, where we really have these types of issues. The reality to this entire conversation is that prior to the election of President Biden as President, the oil and gas production onshore and offshore in the United States had made us less vulnerable to foreign interference than at any other time in our current history. Since this administration has been in place, we have relied more and more on outside oil and become subject to the same crises and problems that we witnessed in the 1980s and the 1990s and until we discovered shale in places like North Dakota. This amendment guts the entire purpose of the bill.…”