Frank Pallone: “I listened to the gentlewoman from Georgia, and to me, this amendment is unbelievable. I mean, she says that you can't…”

“I listened to the gentlewoman from Georgia, and to me, this amendment is unbelievable. I mean, she says that you can't draw down or sell petroleum products under this amendment for political and nonemergency purposes. Well, I mean, everything around here is political, so I don't know how you would define that. What the President has been doing is using this Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, or in other cases, to increase supply because of the supply shortage due to Russia's action in the invasion of Ukraine. These are, in my opinion, totally legitimate emergency purposes to help the American people and help the supply chain. What the bill does is to say: Well, if you want to do that--if you want to use the reserve--then you have to drill for more oil on public lands. Well, isn't that political. A decision is made to say that you can't use the reserve unless you help the oil companies and let the oil companies take more of our public lands. That is about the most political thing that I can think of. In addition to that, was it not political when the Republican administrations in the past released and sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? What did they do it for. Well, they did it for deficit reduction. They did it to pay for different items, like the 21st Century Cures bill that came out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Were those emergencies? Were those not political?…”