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When he came to office one year ago, President Joe Biden turned off American energy production. That was a major mistake—and now Americans are paying for it with runaway inflation and Ukrainians are paying with war.
Biden’s weakness handed power to Russian President Vladimir Putin—energy is the engine of the Russian economy—and helped embolden him to strike Ukraine.
Now we must act decisively to reverse Biden’s disastrous policies and restore American energy production, full throttle.
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Among Biden’s first acts as president was to hamstring American energy and surrender our energy dominance, and for one reason: special interest politics.
At the behest of far-left environmental activists, President Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline, paused new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands, forced the United States back into the job-killing Paris Climate Agreement, proposed harmful environmental rules on oil and gas emissions, and hiked the “social cost of carbon”—a government metric first used by Barack Obama—to a sky-high $51 per ton.
Today America’s energy sector stands paralyzed, choked by a glut of federal regulations and red tape. The government’s own forecasts predict America will once again slip back into foreign energy dependence this year. All the while, the Biden administration insists on dumping apparently endless amounts of cash into pricey wind and solar projects—none of which come anywhere close to supplying the energy that a world superpower requires.
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Russia has taken note, and taken advantage. While Biden ramped down America’s energy production, destroying blue-collar jobs and livelihoods along the way, Putin ramped up.
Russia now supplies more than 25 percent of Europe’s oil and 40 percent of its natural gas, including 55 percent of Germany’s gas imports.
FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at the Kremlin, in Moscow on February 14, 2022. ((Photo by ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images))
If you wonder why many European nations were slow to provide lethal aid to Ukraine last year, and slow to approve sanctions on Russia, that’s why. And if you wonder why even now the Biden administration won’t impose tough penalties on the Russian energy sector, look no further. Biden has helped make the world dependent on Russian gas and oil.
It’s time to reverse course. In 2019 and 2020, for the first time in a generation, America achieved energy independence. The U.S. became a net exporter of energy, disentangling itself from rivals abroad and supplying its citizens out of its own natural bounty. We can do it again.
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America’s policy now should be to drive down Russian energy production and drive up our own. The American workers who man the pipelines and drill the wells, who run the rigs and pump the gas, are the best in the world. Let them get to work. Let them show the world what they can do.
That’s why I’ve introduced landmark legislation that would marshal the entire machinery of our government to support American energy dominance.
My bill would immediately rescind job-killing regulations that undermine our energy independence. It would enact a preemptive strike and ban any new radical climate regulations that reduce our energy security. It would defund the Paris Climate Agreement, green-light the Keystone XL Pipeline and fast-track new ones like it, cut the “social cost of carbon” from $51 to zero, unleash American fracking, revoke pending environmental rules, and open up federal lands for energy exploration and drilling. All of these actions will create the certainty we need for new business investment. And they will make us what we should be: energy independent.
President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington. (Saul Loeb, Pool via AP)
With complete and total energy independence, we can ensure that American commuters, farmers, families, and workers are protected from shocks while paying lower prices at the pump. Without dependence on foreign energy, we can stand up to aggressors on our own terms.
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The crisis unfolding in Ukraine was exacerbated by Biden’s weakness. With each passing hour, the Ukrainian people are showing their strength. It’s time for our country to show our own.
To punish Putin and weaken aggressors like him the world over, we must power our own nation—and become the dominant energy producer in the world. We have the manpower, and the resources, to do it. Now we must use them.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. JOSH HAWLEY
Source: www.foxnews.com