Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivered remarks on the Senate Floor and requested unanimous consent for his American Energy Independence Act of 2022, which would reverse President Biden’s shutdown of the American energy sector and return American energy to full production. Democrats objected to the bill’s passage.
Immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the price of oil rose to over $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014. Gas and energy prices for working Americans are quickly rising to record highs. The Biden Administration has been reluctant to sanction the Russian energy sector, due to the United States’ dangerous dependence on foreign energy.
Senator Hawley said, “Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to this administration’s dangerous policy of American weakness and in support of the strong men and women of the United States energy sector who are ready to step forward, to return this nation to energy independence, to burnish this nation’s strength, and to show the Russians what the United States is capable of. It will be lost on no one that we are approximately a week into the largest conventional military attack in Europe since 1945. Vladimir Putin’s brutal war of choice against the Ukrainians continues as we speak. It grows worse, more devastating, and more brutal by the hour, and it’s time that in the midst of this war we confront a basic fact — that Russia isn’t so much a country as it is a gas station, and Vladimir Putin’s gas station is open for business and pumping away. And this administration, Mr. President, has made the decision to make this country more dependent on Russian oil, to make the world more dependent on Russian oil, to embolden and empower Vladimir Putin at a time when the world can ill-afford it. And it is time to change course. And we can change course.”
He continued, “And that’s why I have introduced legislation along with Senator Grassley and Senator Hagerty and Senator Tuberville that would do just this. It would reverse the disastrous energy policies of this administration, the policies that have emboldened and enabled and empowered Vladimir Putin and the Russian military and return this country to energy strength, return this country to energy dominance.”