Thune: Senate Republicans Work to Restore American Energy Dominance
“[W]e are working to ensure a secure, reliable, and affordable energy supply for the long term.”
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:
Thune’s remarks below (as delivered):
“Mr. President, Senate Republicans are continuing to work on a reconciliation bill that makes America stronger and more prosperous.
“And an important component of this bill is what it does on energy.
“Republicans spent a lot of time last year talking about how the Biden administration’s hostility to conventional energy production was putting America on a dangerous trajectory in the future.
“And we promised that we would work to unleash American energy dominance if we were put in charge.
“We’ve been working to deliver on that promise since January, and that work continues with the reconciliation bill that we’ll take up this month.
“Mr. President, energy is essential.
“Without a reliable energy supply, our homes, schools, hospitals, businesses, factories – and our entire country – literally grind to a halt.
“It’s the critical resource, and we can’t afford to get it wrong.
“But the Biden administration took us down the wrong path.
“It restricted development of America’s conventional energy resources.
“It imposed regulations that heaped new burdens and costs on conventional energy producers.
“And it implemented an electric vehicle mandate that would have put an enormous new strain on our already wobbly electric grid.
“Mr. President, the United States is rapidly heading toward an energy crisis where we simply don’t have the supply to meet the demand.
“As the Washington Post noted last March, and I quote, ‘Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.’
“Meanwhile, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned of, and I quote, ‘mounting resource adequacy challenges’ in the next decade.
“That’s a pretty serious situation, Mr. President.
“But fortunately, we can do something about it.
“We have an abundance of natural resources from the Gulf of America to the North Slope of Alaska.
“The Biden administration seemed to view those resources as a liability.
“But Republicans recognize … these resources as the assets that they are.
“And our reconciliation bill will help unleash these resources to promote a stable, secure, and affordable energy supply.
“It will open up leases on America’s lands and waters for responsible conventional energy development.
“And it will expand production opportunities for essential energy resources that the Biden administration tried to put on the sidelines.
“Mr. President, as I indicated earlier, leveraging our natural resources through the reconciliation bill is just one part of the Republicans’ energy agenda.
“For the last several months, we’ve been hard at work eliminating burdensome regulations that threatened to stifle energy development in our country.
“We blocked implementation of the Biden natural gas tax, which would have driven up energy prices and destroyed jobs in the energy sector.
“And we intend to do away with this misguided tax in the reconciliation bill that we’ll be considering soon.
“We’ve also repealed Biden-era energy regulations for household appliances and business equipment – regulations that would have driven up costs and reduced choice with little environmental benefit.
“And the House and the Senate have moved to prevent California from imposing a de facto electric vehicle mandate on the whole country.
“Mr. President, the Biden administration sought to tie up American energy.
“But under the Trump administration and a Republican Congress, that era is over.
“Instead of a Green New Deal, we’re giving a green light to energy producers.
“We’re allowing Americans to benefit from our country’s resources.
“And we are working to ensure a secure, reliable, and affordable energy supply for the long term.
“Our reconciliation bill will help put us on the path to that secure energy future.
“And I look forward to taking it up later this month.”
Related Issues: Energy, Budget
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