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Floor Speech

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Mr. BUDD. Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from West Virginia for holding this event to highlight one of the biggest issues facing working families today, and that is the cost of energy in America.

Since President Biden took office, the overall price of energy has skyrocketed by almost 35 percent. And when you dig down into the numbers, individual sources of energy, the news doesn't get any better. Fuel oil is up nearly 50 percent; gas prices are up over 40 percent; natural gas is up over 27 percent.

You know, in real terms, everyday Americans are spending an extra $111 per month to fuel their car and to heat their home. Businesses of all sizes are having to spend thousands of dollars more to produce goods and to move them around the country.

So what is causing all of this? Well, if you ask President Biden, he trots out talking points blaming foreign conflicts for the rising prices. But, to be fair, turmoil in the Middle East and Russia certainly plays a part. But the real question is, Why is the United States so dependent on foreign nations in the first place? Why are we at the mercy of petty despots and dictators for the fuel that we need right here?

It is because President Biden has orchestrated an all-out assault on American energy, starting on his first day in office. The Biden administration stopped construction of the Keystone Pipeline; they canceled all remaining oil and gas leases from the Trump administration in the Arctic Refuge; and they shut down energy exploration on Federal lands. Make no mistake, this is a crisis of President Biden's own making.

In response, President Biden has grasped for a political solution to a policy problem. His administration began to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now the SPR is designed for times of war, national disaster, or a true national emergency. President Biden, on the other hand, has used it over and over again to bail himself out of the political consequences of his anti-energy crusade.

The result? The SPR has declined by nearly 287 million barrels of crude oil since President Biden took office. Our Nation's emergency energy reserves are now at their lowest level since President Reagan's--President Reagan's--first term.

Our country is no longer well-positioned to deal with the next crisis because this President is tilting at windmills and pursuing a radical Green New Deal agenda. For example, this President's EPA is mandating that 67 percent of new car sales in the United States in 2032 be electric. The only problem is, in 2023, only roughly 8 percent--8 percent--of new car sales were EVs. It is clear that the consumer demand is nowhere near sufficient to satisfy his big government mandate.

Even so, if we are going to push such a drastic increase in electric vehicles, President Biden has to get serious about ways to produce enough reliable, affordable energy. He cannot continue to rely on our own emergency reserves to meet this supply. It is time for us to get back to an America-first energy plan: drill on our shores, refill our emergency reserves for a real crisis, and lower gas and electric prices for hard-working Americans.

In order to be a strong nation, we have to be a self-sufficient nation and energy dominant. We know what to do. All we need is the right leadership to get it done.

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