John Barrasso

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about our Nation's economy. On Friday, we saw new inflation numbers, and we found inflation remains the worst that it's been in 40 years. We also found out that in the first three months of this year, the American economy actually shrank. Why did it shrink? Well, because of the inflation that is hitting hard every family in America. So now we have a terrible situation with soaring inflation and a stagnant economy--both at the same time. People are paying more and more, and they are getting less and less. Now, the last time this happened, was in the 1970s. It was called ``stagflation.'' Back then, all the liberal economic experts said it was impossible, you couldn't have soaring inflation in a stagnant economy, but we did. And now here we are 50 years later, same thing again. This is hitting American families like a sledgehammer, and the people are suffering all across this country. Inflation has been so high for so long, the experts tell us it might lead to a recession. Now, a recession is when the economy shrinks for six months. We are already halfway there. Joe Biden, the other day, said everything was fine. He said he was not concerned at all about a recession. He said no one is predicting a recession right now. Well, that is just not true. Maybe he is not listening, but people within his own administration are predicting additional dire economic times ahead. Look, our economy has underperformed projections in four out of the last five quarters since Joe Biden has become President. Joe Biden's own Labor Secretary admits a recession is a real likelihood. Last month, Deutsche Bank predicted a recession by the end of next year. Three days later, the Bank of America told investors inflation shock is worsening; interest rate shock is just beginning; and recession shock is coming. Bank of America went on to say that ``inflation is out of control and inflation causes recessions.'' Last month, Larry Summers pointed out that the United States has never had the current inflation rate and the current unemployment rate without a recession coming within 2 years. Larry Summers went on to say: Recession in the next couple of years is more likely than not. More likely than not. I suspect that is how the consensus will evolve. Well, Larry Summers is right. He has been right before. He has been right about inflation. This is economics 101. It is also American history 101. High inflation brings about a change in the Federal Reserve, so they raise interest rates, and when they raise interest rates, the economy slows down. That is what we are seeing. Inflation is the worst it has been in 40 years, and in March the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in 4 years. The Fed is widely expected to raise rates again very soon. It is easy to see where this is all going. Joe Biden's inflation will soon lead to Joe Biden's recession. Now, maybe Joe Biden is hoping that stagnation will be transitory, just like he said of inflation for month after month after month after month after month. The American people have seen this before. Unlike Joe Biden, the American people are concerned about inflation and they are concerned about a stagnant economy and they are concerned about a recession. Apparently, the President likes to laugh about it. In the last 12 months, we have seen the highest inflation ever recorded for household staples--chicken, lunch meat, baby food. It is hard to get infant formula now. There is a shortage of that all across the country. The American people are feeling stuck in place. They are very stressed, and they feel the squeeze every day. One estimate says the typical family will pay $5,200 more this year than they did last year just to buy the same things. That is $100 a week. This is in addition to the inflation that we suffered last year. Add the two together, working families are paying much, much more to buy the same things that they bought 2 years ago. The truth is painful, and the painful truth is that the average American family is poorer today than they were the day that Joe Biden took office. People have had to change so much in their lives because of this. They have had to change the way they drive, had to change the way they shop and eat, had to change the way they live. A poll last week found that two out of every three American families have had to cut back on spending because of inflation. Half said they are struggling to pay rent. Nearly 90 percent of the American people said they want Congress to bring down inflation. So what have Democrats had to do about this over the last 15 months? Well, last week, the Democratic leader said this: He said he wants to raise taxes. He said it is the only way to conceivably bring down inflation--raising taxes. Well, that may be the only way that Chuck Schumer knows, but I would just say that is not going to bring down inflation, and it is not going to help the economy. Prices are up. Interest rates are going up. Now Democrats want taxes to go up on top of it. Energy prices are at record highs. You have to empty your wallet to fill your tank, and yet Chuck Schumer's answer is higher tax rates. With a recession ready to hit the country, Democrats want to take more money out of the pockets of hard-working people. Well, there is not a lot left to take, I would say to the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and to the President of the United States. It is really no wonder, then, that two out of every three Americans disapprove of the way the President of the United States is handling the economy. The American people know that Democrats--every one of them voted in lockstep with Joe Biden for 15 months. They remember every single Democrat in the Senate voted with Joe Biden on his major spending bill. The American people remember every Democrat supported Joe Biden's economic priorities, which, of course, hurt the economy. The results have been disastrous for the American people. We know what we need to do. We need to lower costs. We need to reduce these burdensome regulations. We need to get back to American energy-- American energy, affordable energy, reliable energy--not going hat in hand to people around the world. We do much better if we are American energy dominant, selling energy to our friends rather than having to buy it from our enemies. We have had the strongest economic times in the United States in my lifetime prior to the pandemic. We know what brought it to us. It was lower taxes, more American energy, limiting regulations. Those are the things that make a difference. Those are the things that Joe Biden has chosen to ignore. The American people are struggling and suffering, and it is about time they get an administration focused on their needs, not on the needs of an administration which is woefully out of touch with the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Morgan for her hard work as an intern in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Morgan is a native of California. She is a student at the University of Wyoming, where she is studying communication. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Morgan for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Andrew for his hard work as an intern in the Senate Republican conference. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Andrew is a native of Vermont. He is a graduate of Gettysburg University, where he studied philosophy. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Andrew for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Jack for his hard work as an intern in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Jack is a native of Massachusetts. He is a student at the George Washington University, where he is studying international affairs. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Jack for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Parker for her hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well, as to the State of Wyoming. Parker is a native of Idaho. She is a graduate of Corban University, where she studied political science. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Parker for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the Biden border crisis. Right now, our Nation is facing a dangerous national security crisis at the border, and it is all because of the policies and the actions of President Joe Biden. Now, there are a lot of crises that we are facing. There is the border crisis; the crisis of high gas prices; there is a crisis of inflation, which is at a 40-year high; and there is the crisis of the issue of international affairs with Vladimir Putin on NATO's doorstep having invaded Ukraine. When you take a look at all of these, the two that I hear about most at home in Wyoming are that of inflation and that of illegal immigration. The thing that is really bringing this to the fore today and why I am coming to the floor to talk about Biden's border crisis is the announcement that on May 23, distressingly, the crisis is going to get a lot worse. On May 23, the experts tell us, including people from this own administration, that the number of people illegally coming to this country could double or even triple overnight. Since Joe Biden took office, there have been millions and millions of illegal crossings from our southern border into the United States. The Border Patrol estimates that more than 700,000 illegal immigrants got away from them since Joe Biden has taken office. This includes 62,000 people just last month. It works out to about 2,000 illegal immigrants vanishing into the United States every single day. These are the ones who got away. These aren't the tens and tens of thousands who are coming through the process and being registered and released into the United States. Once they get in, most likely, they will never leave. Under Joe Biden, we are breaking record after record, and these are the wrong kind of records to break. Last year, the number of illegal immigrants who came to the United States was the highest ever recorded. At the same time, America's immigration enforcement is the least amount ever. And to that point, the Biden administration seems to think everything is going just fine. Yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security testified before Congress. I was on a conference call with him the day before, where he met with a number of the Members of the Republican leadership. What the Secretary said yesterday is this. He said: We have effectively managed an unprecedented number of non- citizens seeking to enter the United States. ``Effectively managed?'' To me, this is an early candidate for the fact checkers' ``lie of the year.'' They haven't effectively managed anything. The only thing they have effectively managed to do is erase the border completely. The men and women on our Border Patrol are working around the clock. They are heroes, although they have been vilified by the President of the United States. This crisis is happening because Joe Biden's policies have tied the hands of the border agents. They are being both abused and disrespected by this President and this administration. On Joe Biden's first day in office, he stopped all construction of the border wall. He ended the successful ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. In fact, just last week, his lawyers were pleading a case before the Supreme Court to eliminate a policy that protects the national security of our Nation. Joe Biden is now ending title 42. People at home say: What exactly is this title 42? Well, it is a section of our laws that deal with public health. At the start of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control closed our border to people from coronavirus-impacted areas. So this title 42 decision by the administration likely, at that point, saved thousands of American lives; it protected our public health; it helped our Border Patrol bring down illegal immigration. Last July, Joe Biden tried to end title 42. He said coronavirus was over; it was behind him. He was patting himself on the back for the great job he had done. And then the Delta variant hit the country like a sledgehammer. Joe Biden and the administration were caught by surprise. People looking for testing were running into long lines, empty shelves. He and the administration were caught completely off guard as has this administration on so many things--on the border; on the failure in Afghanistan; on inflation, which they said was going to be temporary and transitory, month after month after month. The administration showed they have no core competence to run this Nation. By September of last year, the Biden administration was forced to admit that one in every five illegal immigrants coming to this country was bringing disease with them. That is tens of thousands of illegal immigrants bringing disease into a country each month. But now Joe Biden wants to end title 42 forever and do it on May 23. If it ends, we are told and believe that this will cause a tidal wave of illegal immigration like this Nation has never seen before. Right now, Homeland Security is preparing for up to 18,000 illegal immigrants each and every day after title 42 ends. That is half a million people a month. That is a population equal to the entire population of the State of Wyoming. Mr. President, I assume the State of Maine--I don't know the exact population--but if you bring in half a million people a day, it doesn't take too many days to add up to the population of the State of Maine. So what are Democrats saying about this? Well, Barack Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, whom we met with regularly when he was in that position--he once said 1,000 a day would overwhelm the system. Joe Biden seems pretty happy with 18,000 a day. Right now, we are at 6,000 a day. We have a system that is overwhelmed and it is going to get a lot, lot worse. Joe Biden could triple the number of illegal immigrants overnight to 18,000 a day come May 23. Earlier this month, former Secretary Jeh Johnson, whom I alluded to earlier--this is what he said. He said the current crisis trends are unsustainable. He said it overwhelms communities in Texas and Arizona; it overwhelms the Border Patrol. This is Barack Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security saying that. I believe Secretary Jeh Johnson is right. Recently, the head of the Del Rio, TX, Border Patrol union--and my colleague from Texas is on the floor here, the senior Senator--this head of the Del Rio, TX, Border Patrol union spoke here on Capitol Hill. He said there are some days in Del Rio when officers are so busy with transportation and processing of these illegal immigrants that no one is patrolling the border, the southern border of the United States. And I am certain that the senior Senator, the distinguished Senator from Texas--Senator Cornyn, who is on the floor--will address this issue after I get finished speaking because he sees this every weekend, as he is home in Texas and talks to people from Texas every day, the crisis that is hitting his home State and is hitting this entire Nation. So this Del Rio sector covers an area of 240 miles of border. And the head of Del Rio, TX, Border Patrol told us no one is patrolling that section of the border because the personnel are too busy filling out paperwork and moving illegal immigrants from location to location. In Yuma, AZ, up to 90 percent of Border Patrol agents are busy with transportation and caretaking duties. Ninety percent of their agents cannot spend their time guarding the border. As a result, large portions of the southern border in Arizona are wide open, which is why I believe the junior Senator from Arizona is so vehemently opposing the President of his own party for a reckless move by a President, who seems to disregard the importance of even having a border to our Nation. Media reports show that 60,000 people right now are waiting at our southern border. They are counting down the days until title 42 is over. Some of them will bring in drugs, some will be human traffickers, some of them may even be on the Terror Watch List. If you are a foreign terrorist on the Terror Watch List, this is a dream come true if you are trying to get to America. On May 23, we will face a humanitarian crisis, a public health crisis, and a national security crisis all in one greater--much greater than the one we are facing today and is already terrifying Americans in every State because with an open border, every State is a border State, every city is a sanctuary city, and people are subjected to the drugs and the crime that is coming with it and the deaths that are coming as well. Now, many Democrats are asking and telling Joe Biden: Keep title 42 in place. Yet these same Democrats, they voted in lockstep with Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden the last 15 months. They understand today that Joe Biden's policy is unwise and very unpopular. But these are the same Democrats who came to the floor and voted to stop building the border wall; the same Democrats who in this very Chamber voted to give stimulus checks--send out checks to illegal immigrants when they voted last year. Not one of those Democrats joined us in supporting title 42 last summer. Democrats can run for reelection, but they cannot run from their records. They voted for the Biden border agenda, and every Democrat shares the blame for this crisis. What happens if the border doesn't stay at the border? No, it makes each one of us less safe. Border Patrol tells us they have caught, so far, 42 terrorists trying to cross the border since Joe Biden took office. How many got away? We are hearing the numbers getting away is 60,000 a month--getaways. How many of those are terrorists who are now living in our midst? Federal narcotics agents say that the vast majority of illegal drugs in this country came here over our southern border. That is how they are getting in. Drug overdoses have never been higher than they are right now. One hundred thousand Americans died of drug overdoses last year. People are dying every day in every State because of drugs being brought in across the southern border by the lax border policies of Joe Biden and the Democrats. If title 42 ends, it is going to mean more drugs, more crime, more death in all of our States. Even the Washington Post newspaper--their editorial board, that is not known for being conservative or lining up with conservatives--this is what they recently said: A migrant surge is coming at the border--and Biden is not ready. All of America knows that. They know Biden is not ready. He is not ready to be President, not ready to run the economy, not ready to help with the military, not ready on any level, and at the border, the Washington Post points out he is not ready. The article went on and said: The predictable effect of lifting Title 42 is a new influx of migrants . . . which would compound an existing surge at the . . . border . . . for weeks or much longer. The Washington Post points out and predicts: Absent progress on [addressing the root causes], the Biden administration . . . will surely face more chaos at the border. This is an administration of chaos. The Washington Post--that was my addition. They ended by saying ``more chaos at the border.'' I am adding ``an administration of chaos.'' Look, the Post is exactly right. This crisis is 100 percent preventable. It is a crisis of Joe Biden's choosing and Joe Biden's making. It is a crisis that is entirely the result of Democrats' reckless open border policies. We need to go back to policies that work. I ask the President to keep title 42 in place. Listen to the Democrats who are talking to you in addition to us, Mr. President, who say keep title 42 in place. And enforce the laws on the books, close the loopholes that encourage illegal immigration, finish the wall, bring back the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy; we know it works. The American people in every State are pleading with Joe Biden. Only about one in three Americans support the President's policy at the border, two-thirds don't. Overwhelming numbers oppose what this President is doing to this country in terms of how he is affecting the economy, inflation, energy prices, and the border. This is a President with record low numbers on all of those areas, and it is all of his own doing and his own making. Mr. President, do not make this, your own border crisis, even worse. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the need for more American energy. Since his first day in office, Joe Biden has been on a war--an all- out war--against American energy. In his very first week in office, he stopped all new leases of oil and gas on public lands. That was completely illegal for the President to do that. A few months later, a Federal court told the President that what he had done was illegal. The law states that the American people may explore for energy on Federal lands, and the law calls for ways that it can be done. So here we are now, 15 months into the Biden administration, and, finally, Joe Biden has grudgingly agreed to follow the law. He is going to sell a bare minimum of leases to obey the court order. So how much is a bare minimum? Well, for the entire State of Utah--my neighboring State--they are only offering one single parcel to the entire State. And at the same time, Joe Biden is raising the cost of American energy production to the point that he is raising Federal royalty rates on the energy produced on that Federal land by 50 percent. When we produce less American energy, the American people end up paying more for the energy they use. This is Joe Biden's economy in a nutshell, the economy that has given us the highest cost inflation in 40 years. In the last hundred years, no President has ever raised these royalty fees for producing American energy until Joe Biden. It just shows that when it comes to energy, Joe Biden is further to the left of any previous American President. So who is going to pay for these higher fees on Joe Biden's attack on American energy? People understand it. They know that they are going to be the ones who are going to have to pay for it, and often it is the people who can least afford it in our home States and across the country. These higher costs for American energy--thanks to Joe Biden--are going to be paid for by working families, people who are already struggling to keep up and falling further behind in Joe Biden's economy. Producing less, raising costs--it is the perfect recipe for more inflation. As I was coming down to the floor, I walked by a TV screen. The bottom screen shot said: ``Joe Biden's approval rating hits an alltime low.'' It seems to be happening all the time, week after week, month after month, continuing to fall in the polls because the American people are distressed and in pain over what this President and what the Democrats in the House and the Senate are doing to the people of this great country. Doing the bare minimum, this President may satisfy the courts, but it is not enough to satisfy or save struggling families. To stop this inflation nightmare, we need a long-term commitment to producing more American energy. Energy companies aren't going to invest if they think--and Joe Biden tells them and threatens them--that he wants to shut them down tomorrow. That is exactly, though, what he continues to talk about doing. So just last week, after the President gave a speech and said: Well, we need to at least do these leases, his climate czar, Gina McCarthy--I guess she must really be the one who is running the show down there in the White House. This is after the President of the United States made a speech about what he says we are going to do, you know. ``Pay no attention,'' she says, ``to the President.'' She said he is ``absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands.'' Who is calling the shots? She said: ``We had no choice but to follow the court ruling.'' Then they asked the Press Secretary. She said last week: ``We are going to continue to fight this court [ruling]''--continue to fight-- ``that is forcing our hand.'' They are going to continue to fight the American people all the way to the ballot box in November, where the American people say, we have had enough of this stuff. Then there is Joe Biden's climate czar, John Kerry, former Member of this body, former Secretary of State. Here is just a couple of things that he has had to say recently. He said, ``We have to put the [natural gas] industry on notice.'' He said, ``You've got [no more than] six years, eight years, no more than 10 years,'' he said. He said, ``by 2030 in the United States, we will not have coal plants.'' He says, ``We will have to be phasing out coal plants five times faster'' than we are doing now. These are people who are not committed to affordable energy. These are people who are not committed to the fight against inflation. These are people who are not committed to the American people and the American families who go to work every day, try to put food on the table, try to get their kids to school. Oh, no. And what does John Kerry, then--who does he have to praise? Well, he praised the energy policy of the State of California. Which State has the highest energy cost in America? California. That is the Biden administration telling the American people, we want you to be like California. We want you to pay even more than you are paying now. Joe Biden and the environmental extremist who the President obeys are doing everything they can to undermine investment in American energy. It is time for this White House to stop this war on American energy. The White House cannot get by--this country cannot get by when the White House does the bare minimum. This White House should be doing everything that we can to produce more American energy, bring down the costs for American families. Joe Biden needs to open up public lands for energy production. The Federal lands are the property of the American people. We have the resources. We have it in our country. We have it in the ground right now. This is a solution to the inflation crisis that is hitting families all across the country. There is no excuse for this administration to continue to block the American people from developing the resources that we have in order to bring down the costs, improve their lives. Joe Biden needs to approve the 4,600 drilling permit applications he currently has sitting on his desk. He needs to speed up the process for pipeline permits, not crush them. And he needs to stop attacking American energy workers. These workers, these are the people who keep the lights on in this country. These people are those who keep the economy running. These hard workers deserve our support. They deserve our gratitude. They don't deserve the way they are being treated by this administration and this President. These are the people who can help us get out of this crisis that Joe Biden has created. The American people are fed up with Joe Biden making excuses and dragging his feet. It is what I saw while walking here to the Senate floor on the television screen today: ``Joe Biden's approval rating hits an alltime low.'' The American people want and demand real solutions. What they deserve is more American energy. And unless this administration wakes up and delivers that, those alltime low approval ratings of this President are going to get even worse. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Rachelle for her hard work as an intern in my Casper Office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Rachelle is a native of Casper. She is a graduate of Kelly Walsh High School. Rachelle currently attends Casper College, where she is studying international studies and communications. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Rachelle for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Violet for her hard work as an intern in my Casper Office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Violet is a native of Casper. She is a graduate of Natrona County High School. Violet currently attends Casper College, where she is studying public relations and human communications. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Violet for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Cam for his hard work as an intern in my Casper Office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office, as well as to the State of Wyoming. Cam is a native of Casper. He is a graduate of Kelly Walsh High School. Cam currently attends Casper College, where he is studying political science. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Cam for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about the need for more American energy. On Thursday, President Biden announced that he is going to release even more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To me, this is another desperate Hail Mary pass. It is a short-term effort to deal with their midterm election crisis. It is a crisis that has been created by the policies of this administration. The real crisis is the cost-of-living crisis, and it is a crisis that is punishing American families. Inflation is at a 40-year high. Gas prices recently hit the highest price ever. Why is it happening? It is economics 101. The supply of energy is not keeping up with the demand for energy. We are now producing about 1.3 million barrels of oil per day fewer-- less--than we were in 2019. Yet, for the last 14 months that Joe Biden has been in the White House, he has done absolutely nothing to increase the supply of American energy. He has not sold one lease to produce energy on public lands--not one. President Obama, at this time into his first term, had already held 47 Federal lease sales--in his first 14 months in office. For Joe Biden, the number is still zero. This just shows that when it comes to energy, Joe Biden is to the far, far left of any previous American President. Joe Biden is already the most anti-American energy President we have ever had. He refuses to do any of the things that would actually help our country in terms of our energy needs. He won't increase oil production by a single drop. No. He wants to release some from the strategic reserve but not actually produce any more American energy. What he is essentially doing is burning through our savings account. This is now the third time that President Biden has released energy from the strategic reserve. He is on pace to burn through a third of our oil savings in less than 2 years in office. Soon, we are going to have the smallest amount in our reserve, the smallest amount in our savings account, since 1984. In November, Joe Biden conducted the largest release in history from the strategic reserve. He released 50 million barrels. So what was the result? He made a big announcement of it. The Secretary of Energy did as well. The price of gas went down by 2 cents--2 cents. The White House was so proud of itself that they actually sent out a press release congratulating themselves. Prices went back up almost immediately. The result was an utter failure. So now Joe Biden said he is going to release 180 million barrels over the next 6 months, which is a million barrels a day for the next 180 days--in other words, between now and right before the elections. The strategic reserve is meant for emergencies. It is not meant for the cynical, political coverup of what the President has done to our American energy policy. Some people call it an election-year gimmick. I call it dangerous--dangerous because we are going to be less prepared for emergencies and be less secure as a nation. We will be less safe. Now, 180 million barrels sounds like a lot. It is about the amount we use on an average of 9 or 10 days. We use about 20 million barrels a day in the United States. We are currently importing a lot more than that. Even the President admits that it won't have a big impact, but he doesn't know what else to do. On Thursday, he said this would reduce prices by as little as 10 cents a gallon. We are still over $4 a gallon nationwide in terms of the national average. I expect it is going to remain that high, over $4 a gallon, through the summer. So who do the American people blame for this? Well, in poll after poll, they blame Joe Biden because he is the one who proudly stood there and beat his chest and said: I have killed the Keystone XL Pipeline. The day Joe Biden took office, gasoline was $2.38 a gallon. America was energy independent for the first time in 70 years. We were energy dominant. We were exporting energy. We were selling it to our friends instead of having to buy it from our enemies. Joe Biden took office and started attacking American energy, and things have deteriorated ever since. That is why it is no surprise that energy and gas prices were up 13 out of the last 14 months. By the time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the average price of a gallon of gas had gone up from $2.38 gallon to $3.53 a gallon. So it was already up over $1.15 a gallon in just over that first year in office for President Biden. Today, the average price of a gallon of gas is about $4.18. Prices may actually go higher if Joe Biden gets his way in terms of energy policy. That is because, when the President put out his budget, we found he wants to raise taxes on American energy. The budget that the President has proposed for the next year contains 36 new taxes, and 11 of them are directly on American energy. It would cost about $45 billion, which, of course, would be carried on to the people who buy American energy. It would be paid by working families in the form of higher gas prices, higher oil bills. It would cost more to heat your home. Even Nancy Pelosi, when she looked at the budget, said: Consumers pay for that. On Thursday, Joe Biden asked Congress to charge fees on oil and gas leases that aren't even being used. Now, this is another gimmick. People want to use those leases, but the administration is blocking the permission to drill to use the leases. This is just a continuation of the Biden blame game. If you want to explore for energy in America, the lease is just the first step, the first of many. You need to apply for a permit to drill. In Wyoming, people know all about this. They call it an APD, an application for the permission to drill. You have to pay to apply after you have paid the rent on the lease. So you apply, and somebody has to make a decision. Those decisions used to be made at the local level. Not anymore. Now the Biden administration has said: We know better than any of you people out around the country. We will make all of the decisions out of Washington. The decision they have made is they are not going to give any of these permits to drill. That is why the President could say: They are not drilling. Well, you are not letting people drill. Now, we are not talking about a couple of leases; we are talking about thousands and thousands--over 4,000 leases--that are tied up that way. We have another group of leases that is tied up by environmental activists who love to sue to stop energy exploration. They want to keep it in the ground. So companies are paying their rental fees. They want to explore for energy, but they are being blocked by the administration. Then they are being blamed by that same administration for not exploring for energy. The President says: Use it or lose it. Well, that is the law of the land right now. If it doesn't produce oil or gas within 10 years, you actually lose the permit. He doesn't want to explain that to folks. If the lease does produce energy, if it does produce oil, then the government actually reaps the benefits from that. They get tax money from that. That helps to pay for many of the things that we do as a government. In Wyoming, in our State areas, we use it to help with paying for education, with paying for healthcare. These are vital services in the community that are paid for by the successful exploration and recovery of energy that is currently underground and that Joe Biden wants to keep underground. In the President's budget, he wants to charge an additional fee on top of all of this. So he refuses to let them drill, and he wants to charge them for not drilling. This is something out of ``Alice in Wonderland.'' More fees will mean producing less. We need to produce more. That is the way to get down the price at the pump--to produce more American energy. Democrats refuse to admit that the percentage of leases that are actually being used today has never been higher. These are old leases. The Democrats' excuses on this issue are what I would put in the category of the Big Lie--the Big Lie to support an anti-American energy agenda. It is an agenda of less American energy, more taxes, and higher prices. It is the reason millions of American families today are struggling to get by. They are feeling the pain. According to one estimate from economists at Bloomberg, American families will spend an extra $5,200 this year--that is $100 a week-- compared to last year, just to stay even. It is all due to inflation in the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, the cost of goods. All of those things are squeezing American families. People are getting crushed. Their dreams are being crushed. Potential savings to send kids to college--that is going away. The savings for a vacation--that is going away. You have to empty your wallet to fill your tank under Joe Biden's energy policies, and the extra $100 a week is on top of last year's inflation whereby people across the country said they were paying more and more to get less and less and that even if they got a raise, they couldn't keep up. They have kept falling further and further behind. People across the country are already living paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford more price increases. They need real solutions, and they are not getting them from this White House. The answer seems pretty simple: Stop the reckless spending here in Washington. Unleash American energy. President Biden needs to do a couple of things right away to unleash American energy. The first is to have a long-term commitment to produce more American energy. Energy companies aren't going to invest if they think Joe Biden is going to shut them down tomorrow, and in a recent speech, he said that is what his goal is. He wants them to produce more today so he can shut them down tomorrow. He does need to open up our Federal lands. We should auction off leases right away, and Joe Biden should approve those 4,600 drilling permits, which, today, are still stuck in limbo. He put them there and locked them in. It takes months to get production up and running. You have to get the right permits. You have to tap the pipelines. You have to speed up the process for pipelines as well. Although we did see the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--all of the Commissioners--come to the Energy Committee, they don't seem to be very interested--at least the ones in the majority don't seem to be very interested--in speeding up the pipeline process or in allowing pipelines at all. Finally, Joe Biden needs to stop attacking the hard-working men and women of this country who continue to produce energy, who go to work every day to keep the lights on and to keep us warm in winter. We need these workers out there, and Joe Biden needs to stop attacking them on a daily basis. They are the ones who can get us out of the crisis. They are the ones we need for the economic recovery. Instead of spending our savings, it is time to unleash American energy. We need more American energy, and we need it now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to speak about unleashing American energy. Earlier this month, we saw the highest price ever for a gallon of gasoline in the United States. Inflation is over a high of 40 years. Energy costs are driving the cost of everything else, and there appears to be no end in sight. Joe Biden cannot hide from the fact that he is the President of high prices. Meanwhile, in Europe, Vladimir Putin continues his onslaught. The Russian killing machine continues its assault on innocent people. Thousands of civilians have been killed. This includes hundreds of children. Vladimir Putin's war crimes are all paid for with Russian energy. Energy accounts for nearly half of Putin's budget. Energy is the only successful industry in the Russian economy. If you want to defund Vladimir Putin, you have to drain his tank. You have to defund him on energy. So what have we seen from the President of the United States? Well, Joe Biden spent all last year acting like Vladimir Putin was his ``Secretary of Energy.'' Joe Biden played right along. Putin wanted it; Biden did it, followed the ``Secretary of Energy.'' Biden decided against sanctions on Putin's Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. People in this body, on both sides of the aisle, said: Mr. President, sanction the pipeline; don't allow it. Putin said: I want it. Biden gave it. Actually, Joe Biden actually lobbied this body, the U.S. Senate, to not do what we knew was the right thing to do in terms of sanctioning Vladimir Putin and the pipeline. Biden caved to Putin. Biden also caved to Putin by extending our nuclear arms reduction treaty without any conditions. He essentially gave Vladimir Putin exactly what he wanted: a permission slip to build up the military. Even after the invasion, 2 weeks in, Joe Biden was still fine with buying Russian oil. It took bipartisan Members of the House and the Senate to stop it. He didn't ban Russian oil because of the war; it was because of this bipartisan effort in Congress. We finally forced his hand. Democrats in Congress were willing to stand up to the President of the United States and say they were willing to join the Republicans in overriding the President on this very matter. Joe Biden dragged his feet, so a bipartisan group in Congress had to drag Joe Biden. Every Member of this body should remember what President Zelenskyy had to say to us. He said: If there had been sanctions, meaning in January, there would not have been a war. In January, I came to this floor, and I said history would not be kind to those who ran interference for Vladimir Putin. It is even more true today. History will not be kind to those who stood by as Vladimir Putin planned, prepared, and paid for the invasion. At every step in this crisis, Congress has had to take the lead, and the President had to be pulled along. Congress had to drag Joe Biden into banning seven Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. Congress had to drag Joe Biden into revoking Russia's trade status. Congress had to drag Joe Biden into sending lethal aid to Ukraine. Two-thirds of this aid still hasn't been delivered. Congress signed a check for $3 billion in weapons. So far, it looks like Joe Biden has provided to Ukraine about $800 million. So where are the weapons? Where are the weapons right now? There is no time to waste. Innocent people are being murdered. In so much of this, Joe Biden has been not just a day late but billions of dollars short, and he is leading from far, far behind. But Joe Biden seems to be proud of himself. He went to Europe last week, bragged about the sanctions on Russia. Well, there is still a lot of work to do. I am here on the Senate floor to tell you that we have more work to do in terms of dragging Joe Biden along. On Friday, Joe Biden announced an energy agreement with the European Union. The White House listed 14 things that they would do. Well, what was missing from that list? Well, I will tell you: the one thing that would actually work. Missing from the list of 14 was the thing that would actually work, which is increasing the production of American oil and gas. Under the agreement, Europe will buy an additional 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year. Now, that is about 10 percent of what they currently buy from Russia. So where is it going to come from? It is a legitimate question. They don't know. On Friday, a Biden official said this. He said: We can't speak to exactly where the natural gas is coming from. The White House also said that the United States will ``maintain its regulatory environment.'' In other words, no change to current policy. The war on American energy will continue. And if you took a look at the budget that came out yesterday, there are 36 new taxes proposed, 11 of which are going to drive up the cost of American energy. At a time of the highest gas prices ever, 40 percent inflation, the Biden budget says we need to put more tax on the production of energy in this country. We need to produce more energy. We need it. We will use it. Europe needs it. We have promised it to them. Joe Biden's regulators want to keep it in the ground. Now, Secretary Granholm waited until last week to approve two pending applications for liquefied natural gas exports. She could have approved them last year; didn't. Waited until 2 weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine to finally approve two of six permits. It took weeks of bloodshed. There are still four more applications waiting on her desk. Oh, they have been sitting there for well over a year. Time to wake up and approve the applications. Europe has woken up. They are wide awake from their addiction and reliance on their enemies for their energy. Joe Biden is still sleepwalking. Now, Russia is still exporting energy all around the world. We put sanctions in place, but this is what the Washington Post had to say. They called the energy exports continuing today from Russia ``the loophole that's keeping Russia's economy alive.'' China is stocking up on Russian oil at a discount. None of Joe Biden's sanctions do a thing to stop China--not a one. China can continue to prop up the Russian war machine. As Senator Toomey has said, we need secondary sanctions to stop the flow of cash to the Kremlin. Joe Biden's banking sanctions explicitly avoid hitting Russian energy. It is the key to this funding: $5 to $7 billion a week to the killing machine from exporting Russian energy. The banking sanctions don't even go into effect until June 24. It is still March. April, May--June 24. The war may be over by then, but in the meantime, thousands of people could die. Oh, and the President's sanctions do not include Russian uranium. They should, but they don't. As a result, our Nation, America, remains dependent on Vladimir Putin for one of the most important elements on Earth. You want to defund Putin's invasion, it is time to finish the job with banning of imports from Russia to the United States, and we must ban uranium. We need to do it now. Now, earlier this month, I have introduced legislation to do just that. Now, I am grateful that Senator Lummis and Senator Marshall and Senator Cramer have added their strong support. Here in America, we have vast uranium supplies, and it is especially true in my home State of Wyoming. There is no reason at all that America should be buying uranium from Vladimir Putin and Russia. Now, Joe Biden is also helping sell Russian uranium in other countries because, right now, Joe Biden is pushing our Nation into a deal with Iran that was negotiated by Russia. Yes, you heard me right: negotiated by Russia--not negotiated by the Americans, not negotiated by--no. We let Vladimir Putin negotiate with Iran on a nuclear deal. A deal with Iran would mean billions of dollars for Russia. You don't believe it? It is true. A Russia state-controlled nuclear energy company would get about $10 billion out of the deal. More bullets, more bombs, more bloodshed paid for by Joe Biden's uranium deal. When it comes to Iran and Russia, no deal is a good deal. Whether it is uranium, whether it is natural gas, the solution for Russian energy is American energy. We have it. We have it in abundance. This administration will not let us get it out of the ground. Today, we are still producing 1.3 million fewer barrels of oil than we were prior to the pandemic. The administration is still sitting on 4,600 drilling permits. Joe Biden still hasn't had a single lease sale on Federal lands for oil and gas. Just yesterday, Joe Biden proposed a $43 billion tax increase on American energy. Who pays these taxes? Clearly, the hard-working families of this country in the form of higher prices. This is the last thing the country needs now at a time of 40-year high inflation and the highest gas prices ever. Energy security is worth a lot more than climate zealotry. Our friends in Europe who are held hostage by Vladimir Putin will tell you that today. We are much better off as a nation selling energy to our friends than being forced to buy it from our enemies. What President Biden and the Democrats don't seem to understand is this: Energy security is national security. For ourselves, for our allies, we need more American energy, and we need it now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the need for more American energy. When Joe Biden was running for President, he made a lot of promises that seemed to be all to the liberal left. Now, to the hard-working people of my home State of Wyoming, these promises sounded more like direct threats to their lives and their livelihoods.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about America's inflation crisis. People in my home State are noticing it every day. This morning, the majority leader came to the floor and expressed his shock that prices have gone up, but they have been going up for over a year now. Price increases last year on energy alone cost hard-working families over $1,000 more last year--the first year that Joe Biden was President--compared to the previous year. This year, it is going to cost even more for energy--to drive, to heat, all of those things. So I am glad that the Democrats now are--14 months into Joe Biden's Presidency--finally concerned about energy prices, but what we are seeing the Democrats offer are gimmicks. Some Democrats want to call it a gas tax holiday. Of course, the gas tax is what is used to pay for our roads and bridges. So they want to defund--stop paying for roads and bridges but then put the gas tax back on right after the election. It is a cynical ploy. Other Democrats say: No, no, let's not do that. Let's just send everybody more government checks. Well, the Democrats have been doing that, and it is what has caused much of the inflation that we are facing today. Still other Democrats say: No, no, no, let's clamp down on American energy even tighter. These are nice sound bites. We are seeing them. We are hearing them. Those aren't solutions. We know why prices are rising. Prices are rising because supply of American energy is down. We are actually 1.3 million barrels less energy producing now with oil in the United States than we were before the pandemic. So why is supply down? Well, the policies of the Democrats in the House and the Senate and the policies coming out of the White House. Democrats have been in charge of Washington now for a full year, and high prices are really the rotten fruit of Democrat rule. As I said, we are at 1.3 million barrels of oil per day less than before the pandemic. People say: Well, what has caused it? Joe Biden was proud to talk about what has caused it. His first act as President was to stop oil and gas leases on Federal lands, kill the Keystone XL Pipeline, and it is one of his campaign promises. You can go back and look at the videos of Joe Biden as a campaigner saying: I promise you there will be no new oil and gas in the United States. That is actually what the video says, and that is what he says. They are his own words, his own promises. Then he went back to try to clarify that and clean it up a little bit, and he said: Well, not on public lands. This isn't a surprise that Biden has crushed U.S. production of oil and gas. This administration still has not held a single auction for oil and gas leases on Federal lands since the day he has taken office. How does that compare to other administrations? Well, under President Obama, there were more than 30 oil and gas lease sales on Federal lands that had been conducted in the auctions in this same period of time. So has anybody said anything about it? Actually, yes. The courts have ruled. The courts said the President's executive office on Federal land leases is illegal. That is what the courts ruled. President Biden thumbed his nose at the Federal courts. The President has stubbornly refused to open up more Federal lands to American energy production, ignoring what the courts have said. In Western States like Wyoming, where half of our land is owned by the Federal Government, and controlled, it is devastating. Half of Wyoming is Federal land. We are sitting on a treasure trove of American energy. We wouldn't have to be relying on Vladimir Putin or we wouldn't have to be relying on Iran or going hat in hand to Venezuela. We have it here in America, and we do it a lot cleaner than they do in any of these foreign countries run by dictators. When we keep energy buried in the ground, American families get buried in costs. The White House says we don't need to open up Federal lands, no. The White House says there are oil and gas leases that are not being used-- another sound bite. In reality, most of the leases that aren't being used--it is because they are tied up in Democrat redtape or Democrat- run lawsuits. There are some that aren't being used because the companies that have the leases can't get the funding to go and do the exploration. Why can't they get the funding? It is the cancel culture of the Democratic Party. We have seen it. Joe Biden's recent nominee to the Federal Reserve wrote in the New York Times that banks, she said, shouldn't lend money to oil and gas companies--shouldn't do it, period. These are businesses that get loans to do business, and she said: Nope, none for you. A lot of banks listened to her because they thought she was going to be confirmed. Thankfully, that nomination has been withdrawn. Less investment means less production. It results in higher prices. This morning, the majority leader, standing at that podium over there, also said gas prices had gone up ``at a time when families are already struggling.'' Well, why do you think they are already struggling? We know why they are struggling. It is because of the inflation caused by this administration and the policies that have been going on for a full year even though, month after month after month, the President of the United States said they would be transitory. The price of gas has gone up. The price of heating in your home has gone up. The price of groceries has gone up. The price of nearly everything has gone up. Over the past year, prices have gone up 8 percent. We are at a 40-year high of inflation in this country. The average family's income cannot keep up with the price increases that we have been sustaining since the day Joe Biden took office. Just last month, some of the price increases were the biggest on record: chicken, lunch meat, baby food--things that people need to buy. I am glad to hear that the Democrats are finally admitting the crisis is only going to get worse. Why do they say it is going to get worse? Because the cost of producing things has gone up. Energy prices are up; you use energy to produce things. The inflation cost for producing things now is actually higher based on--the price index for production is at 10 percent. So that says that prices are going to go up because if it costs more to produce things, the pricetag has to go up. Food costs continue to go up. Senator Fischer, my colleague, the senior Senator from Nebraska, pointed out that fertilizer costs have tripled. Now Democrats want to make it worse. Democrats in the House--not in the Senate but Democrats in the House--are asking Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency and tighten his choke hold on American energy production. It is going to make inflation even worse. In yesterday's Washington Post, Larry Summers warned that we might face something, I say to the Presiding Officer, that you and I remember, something from the Jimmy Carter days called stagflation. That is where you have inflation and stagnation at the same time. It is a terrible thing to happen to an economy. The crisis is only going to get worse. We need to change course. We need to do it now. Stop the reckless spending, and above all, unleash American energy. Don't be a country that not too long ago was asking Russia to produce more, asking OPEC to produce more, asking Iran to sell us energy, asking Venezuela. Produce it here. We have it here. Open up these Federal lands. Approve the drilling permits--the 4,600 drilling permits that are stuck in limbo by this administration. American families cannot afford 3 more years of Joe Biden. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about American energy. Joe Biden is the President of high prices and of low approval ratings. Just yesterday, a gallon of gas sold for the highest price ever in the United States, and inflation is at a 40-year high. Now, the American people clearly understand that radical Democrat energy policies are the cause of these high prices--the prices that people are paying every time they go to the pump to fill up. On Thursday, the White House admitted, in terms of these high prices, that it is going to get worse. Of course, Democrats are trying to blame Vladimir Putin for the high price at the pump. Well, to me, it is dishonest, and it is desperate. Vladimir Putin didn't cause the inflation crisis that began in this country 12 months ago. Now, Vladimir Putin has cashed in on America's inflation crisis. He has done it by selling more energy at high prices, and he has done it for more than a year. It has been his cash cow. America's inflation crisis is specifically the result of Democrat spending and Democrat attacks on American energy. The two combined have added to the situation that we are in now, attacking American energy and massive spending. Last March, Joe Biden signed the single-most expensive spending bill in American history. Even his own experts warned him not to do it. Democrat economics expert Larry Summers, who had been Treasury Secretary for President Clinton, warned that this is going to cause inflation. Last February, the former Obama and Clinton adviser wrote in the Washington Post--this is from Larry Summers: There is a chance that . . . stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels . . . will set off inflationary pressures. He said: Inflationary pressures of a kind [that] we have not seen in a generation. He is exactly right. That is what has happened. That is why we are at a 40-year high of inflation, and that is a generation. Obama adviser Jason Furman said the same thing. He said that bill was ``definitely too big.'' He said: ``I don't know any economist''-- ``any,'' he said--``who was recommending something the size of what'' President Biden was doing. Yet Joe Biden proved to be hard of hearing, refused to listen to what they had to say, signed the bill anyway, put $2 trillion on our Nation's credit card, and he flooded the country with government cash. Ever since then, this country has been in an inflation upward spiral. At the same time, Joe Biden also had a stranglehold over American energy supply. He announced it during the campaign and enforced it the day he took office. Energy is called the master resource for a reason. It powers our economy. It powers our military. It powers our Nation. It is critically important. When the price of energy goes up, so does the price of everything else. Starting on his first day in office, Joe Biden has waged an all-out war on American energy. He shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, and he bragged about it--no hiding from this one. He shut down oil and gas leases on Federal lands. He bragged about that as well. He shut down exploration for energy in the Arctic. It was always interesting to see the senior Senator from Alaska, Ms. Murkowski, come to the floor and say over the last year that we are using more energy from Vladimir Putin's Russia than we are from Alaska, her home State, in terms of oil. Those are because of Joe Biden's policies. Now his lackeys at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are making it almost impossible to build gas pipelines, to move gas from where it is explored to where it is needed. As a result, we are today actually producing a lot less energy than we were prior to the pandemic. I heard the White House spokesperson. She talked about the fact that we are at record-high levels. We are not. We are at about 1.3 million barrels of oil a day--fewer now being produced in the United States than we were prior to the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were No. 1 in production in the world. Now we are No. 3, behind Saudi Arabia and behind Russia. What does lower supply of American energy mean? Well, in supply and demand, lower supply means higher prices. When Joe Biden took office, a gallon of gas was at $2.38. It went up every month. Twelve of the last 13 months, the price of gas kept going up at the pump. Twelve of the 13 months that Joe Biden has been in the White House, the price of gas went up. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin was laughing all the way to the bank. Joe Biden must be patting himself on the back right now about banning Russian oil, something that took him kicking and screaming to do after bipartisan Members of the House and the Senate came together and said: You have got to stop doing this. It took him a couple of extra weeks to come to the realization that this body and the House, in a bipartisan way, were opposed to the delays--the ongoing delays--of this administration. Now Joe Biden has his latest excuse for inflation. He said it is Vladimir Putin. The American people aren't buying it. In record numbers, they are not buying what the President is trying to sell. The American people haven't forgotten the past year. It has been a year of high prices. It has been a year of misery and pain for families all across the country. For Joe Biden, it has been a year of excuses. The excuses keep changing, but they are ongoing. First, he said that inflation was transitory. He said it month after month after month after month. And, then, remember when he said inflation was a good thing? Then, of course, he blamed corporate greed--always looking for somebody else to blame, always trying to pass the buck. Now he says inflation, which has been crushing American families, was because of Vladimir Putin, just 3 weeks ago. Mr. President, people have been suffering under inflation, and their wages haven't been keeping up with the rising prices in this country for well over a year, since you took office. People recognize that. They remember the pain and the suffering in trying to go through Christmas, trying to decide whether they could afford gifts for the family; families who had to decide, living on a fixed income, if they could afford to eat or to heat their homes. That was all before Putin, and they haven't forgotten, Mr. President. Even though you may not think they remember, they do. It is now 8 months until there are elections, and I know we are going to hear a lot more excuses from the Democrats in Washington between now and November 8. I expect the excuses are going to change a couple more times. None of the excuses are going to be believable. So they will keep trying to come up with another one. Inflation sure wasn't transitory, not for a full year, not to a point where we are now at a 40-year high for inflation. How about that idea when the President said inflation was a good thing? Actually, we heard it from the White House Press Secretary. We heard it from the White House Chief of Staff. They said inflation is a sign of high demand. If our economy is doing so well, why don't the American people believe it? What kind of fantasyland is the President living in? According to the Washington Post, Joe Biden's approval rating on the economy--how well he is doing in the economy--out of 100 points, he is at 37 percent approval. These are record-low numbers. So Democrats can use their arguments all that they want. I think it just makes Americans want to reject anything the Democrats are trying to sell. If Democrats are right about corporate greed, then, why have Democrats done nothing about it? They have run Washington for the past full year plus a couple of months. Democrats have had the time to introduce plenty of bills: bills to raise taxes, bills to take over elections, bills to pack the Supreme Court from 9 up to 13 members, bills to make Washington, DC, a State. What can they point to as an accomplishment to actually address and lower inflation? That is what the American people want. Just this past weekend, studies are out. What is the No. 1 concern of the American people? It is inflation. What are Democrats doing about it? Nothing. They are making it worse. So we are living in this world where Democrats and the White House continue to spin one story after another, and Democrat spokesmen for the party continue to try to convince the American people: Don't believe your own two eyes; believe them. The American people are smarter than that. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It is about a year after the inflation crisis began. It is a great human tragedy, and it is heartbreaking. Tomorrow, Members of this body will be having a video address by President Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, a heroic and courageous individual who is leading his nation with stubborn courage, historic patriotism, fighting for freedom. To try to tie this to the inflation that the American people have been suffering through for the last year is just wrong. And 2021 was the worst inflation in 40 years, long before Putin invaded Ukraine. By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, gas prices were up in the United States more than $1 a gallon, and America was more addicted to Russian oil because that is what Joe Biden wanted. He wanted us to need more Russian oil. But that didn't stop Joe Biden from trying to blame the whole thing on Putin. Former adviser Steve Rattner put it this way: This is [Joe] Biden's inflation and he needs to own it. Over the weekend, Larry Summers said this: The president was wrong-- He is talking about Joe Biden. He said: The president was wrong to blame this month's [inflation] number on [the war in] Ukraine. Larry Summers went on to say: [Everyone] had been expecting, from the time before Putin launched the invasion, that inflation was going to accelerate. He went on to say: This is a consequence, fundamentally, of an overheated economy. He said: And we are not going to have a full solution until we do something about that overheated economy. A full year has passed--one year in office, a 40-year high of inflation, and a year full of excuses by a President whose excuses do not add up. What adds up is the fundamental fact that American families spent $1,000 more on energy during Joe Biden's first year as President than they did the previous year. And it is going to be worse this year. The time for excuses is over. There is no excuse for restricting American energy production. Democratic Senators spent 10 months denying that there even was inflation and doing nothing about it. Yet now some Democrats in this body are talking about making it even worse. They have introduced multiple bills to raise taxes. Astonishingly, one of the bills they have introduced is to raise taxes on American energy. They already tried that last year with their reckless tax-and- spending spree. Now, it seems like some of them want to do it again. If we put more taxes on American energy, what is that going to do? It is going to raise the price even higher. Higher costs on producers are going to become higher costs on the customers. People don't want us to raise costs; they want us to reduce costs. That is what they are complaining about. That is what we have gotten as a result of the Biden policies. We need to break this choke hold that the Democrats and the Biden administration have on American energy. So how do we do that? Well, 2 weeks ago, I led a letter with every Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, and we sent it to President Biden on the morning after the State of the Union Address. We gave him a list of 10 specific actions that he could take today to produce more American energy and bring down the costs for American families. Step one would be to end his Executive order on oil and gas leases on Federal lands. Half of my home State of Wyoming is Federal lands. There is an abundance of energy there. The American people need it. It will help reduce costs for families. It will actually bring tax revenue into the government, both the State as well as the Federal Government. Yet Joe Biden is not interested. Joe Biden's Executive order has no basis in science, no basis in law. It needs to be rescinded today. The fact that some people have leases to explore for energy--a small number--is no excuse for the President's actions. Over 4,000 leases are awaiting permission to drill right now. They have a lease, but they are tied up in redtape and cannot get permission to drill from the government. So even if you have a lease, you need to then get permission from the government to use the lease. They ought to approve those leases today. But we need to go further. We need a long-term commitment from the Government of the United States to produce American energy to help American families. Leases take years to explore and to develop. We need a commitment that is going to last long term. No one is going to make those kinds of investments if they think Joe Biden is going to shut them down again the next day. Now, American energy companies have a lot of good reasons not to trust Joe Biden, not to trust those whom he has--the anointed ones whom he has appointed to high positions in the government. If you just take a look at Joe Biden's nominees, they are a murderer's row of climate elitists and climate alarmists, and those are the ones that call the tune for this President. If you took a year of Joe Biden's energy policies and take a look at what has happened over the past year that got us here today and you explain that to the American public and you say: What do you think about this? as they are filling up their tank, two-thirds of them would say: Under these Biden policies--two-thirds would say--the country is heading in the wrong direction. That may be every Republican. It is also a lot of Independents, and it is also some Democrats as well who have buyer's remorse at what they have gotten from this President. It is going to take time to repair the damage. We need to start today. The time for excuses and blame from this administration needs to be over. The American public is demanding American energy, and we need it now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I did listen with great interest to every word of my colleague from Maine. We spend time together on the Energy Committee. He has lots of very good ideas, and we discuss things constructively. When we talk about supply and demand, I just find it very interesting that for something like natural gas, of which we have an abundance in Wyoming--and when I was in the Wyoming State Senate, natural gas prices were over $16. With the renaissance of American natural gas energy and the production of something called fracking, prices dropped dramatically to the kind of numbers that the Senator from Maine mentioned earlier--to about $3. It went down, way down. That doesn't help the people in Massachusetts, where the price is $18, because they can't get permission to have pipelines to deliver the affordable gas that we produce here. I mean, it is fascinating to take a look at Pennsylvania, which is half the price than in Massachusetts; and they are not too far apart. I just went out here, as the Senator was speaking, just to take a look and see what the differentials were in the prices. The price of natural gas is twice as high in Massachusetts as in Pennsylvania when they are less than 200 miles or 300 miles apart. It has nothing to do with the availability of gas in the ground; it has to do with the delivery to the end user. That is the result of political decisions being made on the ground, in States, to prevent the infrastructure to deliver the material, to deliver the natural gas, that those people need. It was even an issue on the ballot in my colleague's home State of Maine to move energy from Canada down to Massachusetts, and it was blocked by the voters in Maine, which is their right to do. They have a right to make those decisions as to what they want to vote for or against. And that was on the transmission of even renewable energy. Politics and decisions by either the administration or a State or voters make those decisions. So there is an abundance of natural gas, and there is a limitation on how you can get it to people because of political decisions. I heard my colleague mention the number of leases that are out there. There are about 9,000 leases the administration continues to talk about, saying there are 9,000 leases of which nobody is exploring or that drilling hasn't been done. Well, that is just the first step of getting a lease. It is like leasing an apartment: You pay the rent, but you need a key to get into the building. I mean, you pay the rent, and it is your apartment, but you can't actually get in until they give you the key. That is the same thing that happens here. You need to apply for permission to drill, and we know that the administration has said: We are not going to give any of those. There is no permission. Sorry. I know you paid for the lease, but we are not giving anybody a key. And they did that to about 4,600 recent leases. Normally, some of those decisions are made at a local level but not in the Biden administration. Oh, no. Some assistant secretary said: Every one of them has to come to me. I can get the documentation for the Presiding Officer or for my colleague and friend, the Senator from Maine. This is a very heavyhanded administration when it comes to exploring for American energy, and they continue that way. The President, when he was in Glasgow for the climate conference, I think surprised many of us when he asked OPEC+--``plus'' being Russia-- to produce and sell more energy to the United States. Over the last year, we have averaged about 670,000 barrels a day of oil coming in from Russia, which is more than we get from Alaska. The Keystone Pipeline, which the President killed on his first day in office, would have brought in over 800,000 barrels a day. It is not that the President has been shy about the fact that he has done all of these things; he has taken great credit. I mean, look at the Presidential debates when President Biden--then Candidate Biden-- said, if he got elected, there would be no oil and gas exploration on public lands--no leasing, no use. That is why they have shut down all of these applications for the permits to drill. That is why the administration has said: You are not taking it out of the ground. This is a Presidential promise. As of today, we continue to produce a lot less oil in the United States than we did at the height of our economic boom prior to the pandemic. We have about 1,400,000 barrels a day less in U.S. production today than we had during the height of the economy before the pandemic. So we have a lot of catching up to do. When the administration says you can't bring it in from Canada because you are not going to have Keystone and then pounds its chest in pride, that is a political statement. When the nominee for the Secretary of the Interior says to leave it all in the ground--all of it--that is a political statement. When a local community says, ``No pipelines in here. We don't care if the people in our communities have to pay twice what they are paying in our neighboring State,'' that is a political statement. It is all based on climate because we have John Kerry and his words to prove it, as well as those of the President of the United States. So I continue to enjoy having discussions with my colleague from Maine, and we will continue that on the Energy Committee, where he is a very productive member. There are areas we work together on and areas in which we disagree. People are entitled to their opinions. These are the facts as to what is happening with American energy today and as of the needs of the Nation. As we have recovered and continue to recover from the pandemic, we are still very far behind in American energy needs, and it is the political activities of this administration that have limited our ability to return to our full, productive capacity. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about our Nation's energy policy and the crisis that we find ourselves in as the cost of energy continues to go up and up and up. Right now, gas prices are nearly double what they were the day that Joe Biden became President of the United States. So you ask: Why is this happening? That is what consumers, that is what people in my home State of Wyoming are asking about. What has happened? How is it that it has gone up so much? Sure, there is the war in Ukraine, but the prices have been going up day by day by day after Joe Biden became President, and the reason, I tell people at home, is because Joe Biden has declared war on American energy--the policies of this administration, the policies of the Democrats in this body and across the way in the House. On day No. 1, Joe Biden shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline; he shut down oil and gas leases on Federal lands; and he shut down the exploration for energy in the Arctic. My colleague the senior Senator from Alaska, who previously had chaired the Energy Committee in the Senate, has said that we are actually, in the United States, using more energy from Russia, more oil from Russia than we are from Alaska, her home State, a State in the United States. Now we see the President's appointees making it almost impossible to build gas pipelines. So even if you were able to explore and discover energy--oil, gas--you can't get it to market because they are blocking pipelines all across the country. And the FERC--the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--just a week and a half ago revised its guidelines to make it even tougher. They talk about oil and gas leases. Once you get a lease--you pay for a lease to explore for energy--you have to come to the government for permission to drill for it. You actually have to pay money to apply for permission to drill. It is actually called an Application for Permit to Drill. And the Biden administration last month said, ``We are not going to give you any more of those,'' to anybody who wants to explore for energy on public lands. And, in fact, there are about 4,600 of those stuck in limbo right now. In my home State of Wyoming and across the country, people are asking: How can a President put such a radical and self-destructive agenda which we have to live under? And what I tell them and what they understand is that the Biden administration is completely controlled by the climate elitists, the climate alarmists who dictate the policies of the Democratic Party in this country. So just look at Joe Biden's climate czar. Now, that is kind of a nickname for the position, but the reality of the title is the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. It is John Kerry. So this is a very high position in this administration. He didn't come to the Senate for confirmation. Oh, no. They wouldn't risk putting something like that up here because then John Kerry would have to answer questions. But John Kerry, no question about it, does speak for the administration. Joe Biden appointed him. John Kerry and Joe Biden served together in the Senate, in this body. I served with both of them on the Foreign Relations Committee. John Kerry was a previous Secretary of State of the United States at the time that Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States. So the position of John Kerry is also the position of this administration, otherwise, why would he be the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate? When John Kerry speaks, it is Joe Biden whom he speaks for. Well, John Kerry and this administration have a delusional obsession, and their delusional obsession is with climate. John Kerry and this administration are so obsessed with our climate that they believe it is more important than our energy security and than our national security. Now, there are countless examples. And I just want to go through a couple of them that have occurred just within the last 3 weeks, just within the time that Vladimir Putin's soldiers have encircled Ukraine and now have attacked Ukraine, continuing to kill innocent civilians. The night before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, with the troops at the ready, John Kerry actually told the BBC in an interview that he was worried about the carbon emissions that would result from the war--the carbon emissions, not the death, not the destruction, not the suffering; no, the carbon emissions. He also said--I mean, it is astonishing. People listened, and they said: This can't be the position of the administration of the President of the United States. But yet it is the position of John Kerry, the President's Special Envoy, that war would be a distraction, would distract from the climate agenda. John Kerry went on to say this. He said: I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate. Let me repeat. John Kerry, Special Envoy, speaking for the President of the United States: I hope President Putin will help us stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate. John Kerry believes, by his statements and others that I will get to, that what is happening with the war in Europe is a distraction from the real issue of the day, the key issue--climate change. People are being murdered in the streets, Vladimir Putin is conducting nuclear drills, and the President's key spokesman on issues affecting energy in this country is hoping that President Putin will help us stay on track, and what is happening there is a distraction. This is absurd. John Kerry thinks that Vladimir Putin cares about the climate? It is impossible. Putin just yesterday bombed a maternity ward. Putin's forces have killed dozens of children. Yet John Kerry is desperately waiting by the phone, clinging to the hope of a phone call from Vladimir Putin. I hope John Kerry isn't holding his breath waiting for Putin to address the issue of climate. Now, in the very same interview, John Kerry was asked about the possibility that Russia would invade Ukraine. John Kerry's answer is this. The former Secretary of State, former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said: ``I thought we lived in a world that said no to that kind of [thing].'' What kind of a world is John Kerry living in? Sounds like a nice place. It is not the real world--not the world we live in, not the world that is right now wreaking havoc on the people of Ukraine. The fact that John Kerry, the President's spokesman on issues of climate, said this out loud in public just shows that John Kerry and this administration--in terms of their position on energy and energy security and national security, it must put them in the position of being the most naive people on the face of the Earth. John Kerry flying around the world in his private jet, representing the administration, worrying about the carbon emissions of a war, whereas we know as of now that thousands of innocent people already have or will lose their lives. Then on Monday, just 3 days ago, I believe John Kerry made it worse. At that point, the tanks were in the streets, Russia was on the attack, people were dying, and millions of people have left the country of Ukraine, seeking asylum, seeking help, seeking relief, going across the border, seeking humanitarian care, and John Kerry, in a heartless statement, said the 2 million Ukrainian refugees were nothing--John Kerry--nothing in comparison to the refugees who will flee a warmer climate someday. Someday. Two million refugees--nothing compared to what may happen someday with climate change. This is the world's largest refugee crisis in the last 70 years, since World War II. There are 2 million Ukrainians now displaced, trying to get out of the country of Ukraine, some losing their lives-- they think they are going on safe corridors--being killed by Putin as he bombs them as they think they have safe passage. John Kerry doesn't seem to be impressed, which, to me, means Joe Biden is not impressed; the administration is not impressed because Joe Biden has allowed John Kerry to continue to this very day, to this very moment, to speak for this administration as the climate envoy. John Kerry should be fired. If he is not, he continues to speak for the President of the United States because John Kerry--which means this administration is more concerned about a hypothetical event in the future than what is happening on the face of the Earth right now. This is an obsession. This is delusional. And the obsession explains a lot. It explains why this White House always puts environmental fantasies ahead of American security and American energy. That is what we are seeing. This administration puts climate ahead of jobs. It puts climate ahead of bringing prices down. It puts climate ahead of working families. The administration puts climate ahead of our allies. We have sky-high gas prices, the highest of all time. You know, we see inflation is the highest in 40 years. We got the new bad inflation numbers again today, which are hurting our families. We can't keep up. Wages can't keep up. A 40-year high inflation but the worst of all time highest gas prices ever. We have the worst prices in Europe in decades and decades and decades. And the Biden administration won't even consider--won't even consider-- producing more American energy. Earlier today--today--Reuters reported the White House has decided not to boost exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe. They are pleading for it. They want it. We have it. We have it in abundance. Now, the administration won't let us build the pipelines to move it, won't let us explore for it, but we have plenty of it here in the United States. They are desperate, and they are trying to break the ties they have to Russia. The report from Reuters today says: ``The White House was weighing the announcement of . . . ways to boost LNG exports to Europe . . . However''--however; wait a minute, not going to happen--``the interagency review has been shelved . . . after some in the White House argued''--some in the White House argued; not a supply and demand issue--and I see the junior Senator from Maine here, who talks about a supply and demand issue with regard to LNG. Oh, no. Those in the White House argued that ``it would counter the administration's efforts.'' Letting our friends and colleagues in Europe who need our LNG, of which we have an abundance--oh, no. ``[I]t would counter the administration's efforts to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels.'' Once again, this White House, with John Kerry the spokesman and it looks like Joe Biden the lapdog--whatever John Kerry says, we are going to do--has put climate before our national security and before our energy security. It is time for the administration to get its priorities straight, and it is time to remove John Kerry from this position. It is time for Joe Biden to wake up and to speak up. The climate elitists have done tremendous damage to our Nation and are continuing to do damage to our allies. For ourselves and for our allies, it is time to produce more American energy. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about inflation. And one thing is sure, Joe Biden is the President of high prices. New numbers are out today. This morning, we found that inflation remains the worst it has been in 40 years--40 years. Now, we knew that today's inflation numbers were going to be bad for Americans and bad for the administration, but the numbers today are worse than people thought. Prices rose nearly 8 percent in just the last year. That means we are now seeing more inflation in the last 13 months under President Joe Biden than we did in the previous 4 years. And families are suffering. Prices are going up, but wages are not keeping up. Last week, we found out that wages, in terms of an escalation, had slowed down a bit, which means that people are falling further and further behind. Wages just cannot keep up with the prices that continue to go up. Month after month after month, the American people have found themselves falling further and further and further behind. I remember when Joe Biden told all of us that inflation would be ``transitory.'' He kind of laughed about it. He said it over and over again. And then, in December, he said inflation had ``peaked.'' Mr. President, inflation had not peaked. Joe Biden, once again, dead wrong. Now, the American people are reminded about this every time they go to the gas station, every time they go to the grocery store, every time they go out to purchase goods. So why is this happening? What has happened to America under Joe Biden and the mismanagement of this Democratic administration that has the House, the Senate, and the White House? Well, there are two main things. One is Democrats' spending, excessive spending. The other, of course: Democrats' restrictions on American energy. One year ago, Joe Biden signed the largest spending bill in American history. Democrats put $2 trillion on America's credit card. They flooded the country with government cash, and prices went up. And ever since that day, prices have been going up faster than wages. There is still no end in sight. The painful truth of all of this is energy prices, food prices all across the country are going to continue to go up thanks to the mismanagement of Joe Biden and this administration. Today, a gallon of gas in the United States is the highest it has ever been--ever. When Joe Biden took office, the average price of gasoline in America was $2.38 a gallon; and today, it is about $2 a gallon more than it was then. Coming from my home State of Wyoming, where people drive more miles per capita than any other State in the country, people in my State are really feeling the pain of the mismanagement by Joe Biden and the Democrats. If we think it is bad in Wyoming, let's go to the liberal paradise of California. I don't know what it is in the Presiding Officer's home State of Hawaii, but in California, it is $5.60 a gallon. Summer is coming, and people are expecting the prices to get even higher. So what is Joe Biden's answer to this? He is blaming everything on Vladimir Putin--everything. It is a convenient excuse. It is just wrong. By the time that Vladimir Putin started to encircle Ukraine and then actually invaded Ukraine, inflation had been roaring here at home for over 10 months. Gas prices were already way up, $1.25 a gallon higher than they were on the day Joe Biden took office. So Biden's numbers just don't add up. Russian oil amounts to about 3 percent of our energy use in the United States. Gas prices haven't just gone up by 3 percent. No, no. They have nearly doubled during Joe Biden's Presidency. The real reason that prices are up so much for energy is Joe Biden has restricted our use of American energy. If you listen to his--go back to the tapes on the debate stage when he was running for President. He said he is going to keep it in the ground, no oil and gas or exploration or coal on public lands--none, zero. The White House Press Secretary the other day said, Oh, we are at record high production. We are not. Mistake. Absolutely wrong. She should be fact-checked. We are over a million barrels a day fewer U.S. barrels of oil produced today than we were during the height of our production before the pandemic--actually, 1.4 million barrels a day fewer barrels today than we were at the height of our production before the pandemic. Well, when supply goes down as a result of the mismanagement and the decisions made by this Biden administration and the refusal to allow for permits to explore for energy, prices go up; and they have. When the price of energy goes up, the prices of everything go up as well. What are the Democrats proposing about high prices for energy? Well, the answer for Democrats seems to be anything except more American energy. Democrats have essentially floated three proposals: One is defund our roads and bridges; the second is buy more energy from our enemies, people that chant ``Death to America''; or keep prices high. Those are the options we hear from the Democrats. We see some frightened Democrats worried about reelection talking about suspending the gas tax and then bringing it back right after election day. Well, the gas tax is what pays for the roads and the bridges, the highways of our Nation, but bring it back right after the election. Well, does that mean we are going to need less energy after election day; so it is OK to raise prices after the election? Of course not. Even former Clinton and Obama economic adviser Larry Summers calls this proposal being introduced in this body by Members of the Democratic side of the aisle--he called it ``short-sighted, ineffective, gimmicky, and goofy.'' That is Larry Summers from both the Obama as well as the Clinton administration. If we completely repeal the gas tax, gas prices would still be $1.75 more a gallon than they were the day Joe Biden took office. So another option the Democrats are floating is, ``Hey, let's buy more energy from our enemy.'' Wouldn't that be a great idea, says the President? So officials from the Biden administration have gone hat in hand to Venezuela last weekend as well as to Iran. Venezuela is one of the closest allies to Vladimir Putin. I understand the current man in power in Venezuela actually called to congratulate Vladimir Putin for what he is doing in Ukraine--so is Iran, in terms of the world's No. 1 sponsor of terrorism. That is who Joe Biden has chosen to talk to--Iran and Venezuela--rather than United States energy producers. Do we want to pay our worst enemies over $100 a barrel for each barrel of oil they will sell to us? Do we want to send billions and billions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer dollars in this country to those who hate us and burn American flags and chant ``Death to America,'' or do we want to create jobs here at home, produce more American energy? The answer is obvious to most American people. It may not be obvious to the man in the White House or his administration or those around him, but Joe Biden would rather have an enormous transfer of wealth to our enemies than tell the climate elitists who he dances to the tune of that we are going to produce energy at home. Finally, some Democrats are just proposing: Let's keep energy prices high. The Secretary of Transportation says: Just buy an electric vehicle; that will solve all our problems. He said, You won't have to worry about gas prices no matter how high they go. It is OK if they go high as long as you buy an electric vehicle. Talk about being out of touch. The average electric vehicle costs over $55,000. Families who are struggling in this Biden economy, they can't afford to spend $55,000. We have many, many Americans living paycheck to paycheck, falling further and further behind. And the Secretary of Transportation says: Hey, just go find $55,000, buy an electric vehicle, and you can plug it in. Where do you think the electricity comes from? It doesn't come from the wall. Talk about an administration being out of touch. That is what we are dealing with in this country today. Two-thirds of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck. This morning, we had a hearing in the Energy Committee that said, What about everybody trying to buy an electric vehicle; can we do it? What do we hear? You have to buy a lot of things from China or Russia just to get the rare Earth minerals that are needed to build the batteries for the electric cars. What does Elon Musk, Mr. Tesla, say? He says, Produce more American energy. It is time for the President of the United States to wake up. It is really not an option for everybody to get an electric vehicle. Even if everybody had the money, there are not enough electric vehicles to be had anywhere in the near--not just the near future--the foreseeable future and beyond that. Another option is not to send billions of dollars to our enemies. After all, as a State Department official from this administration told us in the Foreign Relations Committee as Putin was building up--before the invasion, but building up the army around Ukraine--said that Putin's energy was the cash cow that was paying for his military aggression. The American people deserve better solutions, rational solutions, solutions that they understand. And they understand American energy. Just yesterday, Joe Biden said: I can't do much right now to bring down prices. It is not true. Last week, the morning after the State of the Union address, I, along with every Republican on the Senate Energy Committee--every Republican signed the letter, sent it to Joe Biden, offered 10 points he could do and do now to make a difference for American energy production to help the American economy, to help with jobs, to help with energy production, and to help bring down the cost of energy. We know what we need to do. To bring down inflation, we need to stop the reckless spending here in Washington, DC. Of course, that is gone now. The Democrats, on a single party-line vote--no Republican voted for it--did that last year to spark inflation and then all the rules and regulations and limitations on Americans' use of energy has added to and contributed to, today, a 40-year high of inflation. Above all, we need to unleash American energy. We need to use American energy. More American energy will bring down the prices. We have it. When the Secretary of the Interior makes a statement that she wants us to keep all the oil and gas in the ground, that is a statement about this administration's lack of commitment to use American energy. We have the opportunity in America to do it right. For more than a year now, the American people have been paying and paying and paying for the Democrats' anti-American energy policies, and they are sick and tired of it. You turn on the TV, and you see what is happening out there in the world. In Ukraine, people are getting killed by Vladimir Putin--a maternity ward and a hospital bombed, people killed. And what did former Secretary of State, John Kerry, the Democrats' climate envoy say in an interview to the BBC as the Russian troops encircled Ukraine? He said: I hope it doesn't distract from our climate agenda. That is obscene, and it is absurd. The American people realize how absolutely ridiculous the position and how untenable the position of this administration is when you have the No. 1 climate spokesman for the administration, a former Secretary of State, somebody who was a Member of this body for years, close colleague and friend of the President of the United States--it is time for Joe Biden to stand up to John Kerry and to stand up to the climate elitists who say: Oh, no, no American energy because we are so pure. The American people know what is important to them and their lives. We all want to make energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can, without raising costs on American families. The administration seems to be happy to see the prices go up on American families at a time when their wages are not keeping up with their expenses. It is long past time that we produce American energy and do it right here. We have the resources. We have the know-how. We have the workers. We are only missing one thing, and that is competent leadership in the White House and in the Democrats in this body on Capitol Hill. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor first to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished senior Senator from Texas, and I agree completely with his comments regarding what is happening right now in Ukraine on the ground and what is happening with energy in America and our need to become energy independent again. To go from this current position of what had previously been energy dominance to now energy dependence--we need to return to the days of energy dominance for the United States because it is not just about our national security, it is about security for our friends and allies around the world so they don't have to be dependent on the likes of the killer and the thug Vladimir Putin. So I come to the floor today to talk about what is going on in Ukraine and the war in Ukraine and the global implications thereof. Right now, the world is watching in horror as Vladimir Putin continues with his onslaught. Russia has now shelled two nuclear facilities. Russia continues to attack civilian targets. Russia has allegedly used cluster bombs near schools and hospitals. We know that dozens of children have been killed. Russian troops have even attacked an orphanage and a kindergarten. It is heartbreaking, and it is also barbarism straight out of Hell. The world is right to be outraged by these vicious attacks, and we know how these attacks have been paid for. We know how Vladimir Putin has funded his aggression. These atrocities were all paid for through Russian energy. Energy is the reason that Vladimir Putin can afford to invade Ukraine. It is the cash cow that drives his military--oil and gas from Russia. Half of Russia's economy is based on energy, and nearly half of Europe's imports of energy come from Russia. So, as I said, energy is the cash cow that has funded the war. Russia is the No. 2 producer of crude oil in the world, and Putin is the No. 1 rival to the United States in terms of energy production. Well, under Joe Biden as President, there has been a lot less competition for Vladimir Putin. It is not for lack of American energy resources, and it certainly is not for lack of American energy workers. No, it is because of the reckless policies of President Joe Biden and this administration. On Friday last week, I was in Cheyenne, WY, at the State capital, where I spent 5 years as a State senator prior to coming to the U.S. Senate. Every member of the Wyoming Legislature, Republican and Democrat alike, understands fully that the resources we need to power our country are here in the United States. We have the energy in the ground. Yet this administration is not allowing us to use it. We have the workers ready to go, plenty in Wyoming and around the country. The Biden administration continues to block us from producing more American energy. Those legislators I talked to on Friday--they know. Every one of them knows that on Joe Biden's first day in office, he killed the Keystone XL Pipeline. They know because they follow the news, and they know because Joe Biden bragged about it. He said: Look at me, I am going to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline. And he did with an Executive order on day No. 1. Since then, he has blocked oil and gas leases on public land. Quarter after quarter after quarter--we are now in the fifth quarter in a row where he has blocked all oil and gas leases on public land. No auctions for those leases have been held. He also stopped exploration in the Arctic. The Russians are exploring for energy in the Arctic, but, no, not Joe Biden. Nope. After you, Mr. Putin. You go get it and sell it. And we know how he is using the money. So Joe Biden decides he wants to handcuff America from doing the same thing--exploring for energy in the Arctic. At the same time, it has become nearly impossible to build a natural gas pipeline in the United States. You say: No, it can't be possible. Well, the President's lackeys--lackeys--on the Federal Regulatory Commission recently decided to change their approval process for natural gas pipelines. As Putin's army surrounded Ukraine, Joe Biden's lackeys on the FERC changed the way they approved pipelines. They did it as inflation hit record-high numbers, with war looming in Europe. It is astonishing. Joe Manchin called them, as did I, as the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee--called them in front of the committee last week, a hearing last Thursday--and asked them to explain themselves, why this attack on American energy. You know, our country produced lots of oil before COVID. We are producing some now, but we are still a million barrels a day below where we were during the peak prior to COVID. So when supply and production at home is down, prices go up. Earlier today, gasoline prices hit the highest price ever--ever--but prices were way up even before Russia invaded Ukraine. The day Joe Biden took office, gas prices were $2.38 per gallon nationwide. Today, the average is $4.17. It cost more than $5 a gallon in leftwing California. They may be happy to pay the price. People in Wyoming are not, where they drive lots of miles to and from work. In Wyoming, the number of miles driven is the highest per capita anywhere in the country. We know what happens to families when gas prices go up and they have to put more money in the tank that could have otherwise been used for food, for clothing, for school supplies for the kids. I understand that a gallon of gas in Los Angeles now is at $7. Last year, a typical working family paid about $1,000 more to fill their tank over the course of the year than they did the year before Joe Biden became President. It is a direct result of the policies of this administration. And this year, it is likely to be a lot higher because this administration's policies, environmental-extremist driven, are making energy at home much more expensive. So today, after 2 weeks into the war, Joe Biden has announced a ban on Russian oil. It is about time. On Saturday, a number of us were in a Zoom call with President Zelenskyy, the brave, heroic, courageous President of Ukraine. He said: If [we] had started sanctions months ago, there would not have been a war. Now the question is, What is going to replace the Russian oil? Because up until today, Joe Biden was eager to buy Russian oil--eager. So the question is, What is going to replace the Russian oil? Well, it darn well ought to be American oil. Democrats have basically floated a couple of proposals. Buy it from Iran, they say; buy it from Venezuela, they say; or don't buy any at all. On Thursday, the Secretary of Transportation said a possibility was ``working out something with Iran.'' Remember those people? They are the ones who every Friday have a demonstration where they chant ``death to America'' and burn the American flag. He wants to work something out with them. Let me remind the people who are watching that Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of global terrorism. Iran is on the verge of a nuclear weapon. Now Democrats want to give Iran a windfall of American dollars. The last time Democrats bribed Iran, the Secretary of State was John Kerry. He admitted right out that some of the money would go to terrorists, and we know that some of it did. Democrats signed the check anyway. Pallets of cash were delivered to Tehran. Now Democrats are talking about doing it all over again. Oh, and think about John Kerry. What did he say in an interview with the BBC just a week and a half ago, as Russian troops were on the border surrounding Ukraine? He said he hoped that what was happening there ``did not distract''--``did not distract''--from the climate agenda. Oh yeah, we wouldn't want the death of all those people to distract from your agenda, Mr. Kerry, former Senator Kerry, former Secretary of State. But he is not just the former, he is the current climate spokesman for this administration. He is the voice of climate in this administration. So that must mean that Joe Biden doesn't want it to distract from his climate agenda either. It is time to wake up. Over the weekend, the Biden administration officials went to Venezuela. According to media reports, they discussed easing sanctions on Venezuelan oil. Nicolas Maduro is one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for you know who? Vladimir Putin. He supports Russia's war in Ukraine. He apparently called the Kremlin to say that just this past week. This means that the Biden administration is actually actively considering and pursuing, as they were on Saturday, replacing oil from Russia with oil from a Russian client state in our own hemisphere. It is bad energy policy. It is bad foreign policy. It almost seems to be something out of ``Alice in Wonderland.'' Yet, it still makes more sense than the third idea that Democrats are floating: Let's just let energy prices go higher and higher. The White House Press Secretary said that we should just stop using oil altogether. She says the solution to high gas prices and war in Europe is just stop using gas. This is delusional. The idea that we can immediately transition away from oil and gas is a fairy tale. It is a dangerous fairy tale at that. None of these three solutions proposed by the Democrats is in the best interest of our Nation, our Nation's energy security, or our Nation's national security. Oil from Iran and oil from Venezuela is just as dangerous as oil from Russia. Changing our entire economy overnight is not an option in the real world. There is only one answer that works, and that is the answer that the American people are pleading for. The solution to Russian oil is more American oil. We must replace Russian oil with American energy. To do that, we need to produce more. We have the resources. We have the workers. We have the expertise. What we need is the leadership out of the White House in Washington, DC, and we are not getting it. We ought to produce enough American energy to supply our allies and, above all, to bring down prices for people here at home. That is why I have introduced legislation called the ESCAPE Act, to escape what is happening with this control of our energy and the increase in prices. It stands for Energy Security Cooperation With Allied Partners in Europe. This bill expedites the sale of American natural gas to our NATO allies. I also led a letter with every Republican on the Energy Committee and sent it to President Biden the morning after his State of the Union Address. Our letter details 10 specific plans, 10 specific actions the President can take today to produce more American energy. We are much better off producing and selling energy to our friends than being forced to buy it from our enemies. What President Biden and the Democrats don't seem to believe is the undeniable truth that energy security is national security. For ourselves and for our allies, we need more American energy. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the war in Ukraine. One week ago, Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine by land, by sea, and by air. Now we know that thousands of people are dead. Vladimir Putin prepared for this invasion, and he prepared over the course of at least 3 months. Month after month after month, he moved troops, he moved weapons, and he moved them to the border with Ukraine. Now, many of these troops are attacking the capital city of Kyiv. The Ukrainian people are fighting bravely. Their example is an inspiration to the world. They are outnumbered, they are outgunned, and yet they continue to fight for their freedom. Make no mistake, Vladimir Putin has caused this war. He alone is responsible. He is responsible for the death and the destruction that the world is witnessing now. Yet, it is undeniable that the Biden administration's so-called deterrence and diplomacy have failed. Joe Biden ran for President on competence and on his foreign policy expertise. As a candidate for President, Joe Biden said Putin's days of tyranny would be over if he became President--Putin's days of tyranny would be over if Joe Biden were elected President. The opposite has occurred under this administration. Vladimir Putin has become emboldened like never before. Putin is cunning, he is opportunistic, and he is aggressive. When he sees an opportunity, he takes it. He can smell weakness, and he views Joe Biden as weak and ineffective. Clearly that has become even more so after Joe Biden's disgraceful and deadly surrender from Afghanistan. Enemies of ours around the world have become emboldened. After Afghanistan fell, Vladimir Putin increased his weapons testing. Just a few months later, Vladimir Putin put 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. How did the President of the United States, Joe Biden, respond? He lobbied this body, the Senate, against imposing sanctions on Vladimir Putin. In January, this Senate voted on sanctions for Putin's Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. I came to the floor; I argued that the Senate needed to act quickly. Almost every Democrat in this body had previously supported sanctions. Under pressure from the White House, the Democrats reversed course. They buckled to the demands of the President of the United States, who had a different view than this body in a broad, bipartisan consensus had had previously of sanctioning the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline between Russia and Germany. Senate Democrats blocked the sanctions. Look, energy is the reason that Vladimir Putin is flush with cash. He has hit the jackpot. His energy revenues are up, and more than $1 out of every $3 that Vladimir Putin has in Russia's treasury is energy- related. High energy prices today that Americans are paying at the pump and people around world are paying are the reason why Putin can indefinitely--how he can afford this invasion. So who is Putin's No. 1 rival for energy production? Well, it is the United States. But under Joe Biden, American crude oil production is down--down more than a million barrels each and every day from what it was prior to the pandemic. It is not a lack of American energy resources, and it is not a lack of American energy workers. They want to work. The energy is in the ground. This is a direct result of the far-left driven anti-American energy policies of the Joe Biden administration. On Joe Biden's first day in office, he killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, and he bragged about it. So how much energy would be coming across from the Keystone XL Pipeline? Well over 800,000 barrels a day. But that number today is zero. How much energy are we bringing in from Russia each and every day into the United States, imported from Russia, sending money to Vladimir Putin? Well, 670,000 barrels a day. If he hadn't killed Keystone, we would be bringing more energy in that way, and we are now buying and sending money to Vladimir Putin. And the President bragged about it, thumped his chest: I killed Keystone. He also blocked new oil and gas leases on public lands, stopped American exploration for energy in the Arctic. Joe Biden approves of Vladimir Putin producing energy; it seems he is only opposed to American energy production. Just days before he surrendered in Afghanistan, Joe Biden sent his National Security Advisor to beg Russia to produce more oil to sell to us. It is hard to believe. People watching said that can't be true, and I would say: Go to the White House website. Go right now; see if it is still there. It was there two nights ago--the National Security Advisor saying: We are asking OPEC+--and the ``plus'' is Russia; it is Putin-- to produce more energy to sell to us. Why should we depend upon people who are our enemies, whose intentions are not kind or caring for us, and who is now--Vladimir Putin is attacking his neighbor in a bloodthirsty way--rather than allow us to produce American energy that we have today in the ground in this Nation? So it is no wonder that Putin can now afford another assault. Oil hit over $100 a barrel last week--the highest in 7 years, and it is even higher than that today. Today, American families in every State are paying $1 a gallon or more for each additional gallon of gas that they put in the tank than they were the day Joe Biden became President of the United States, and that is soon going to be even a higher number, a higher amount that people are going to be paying as a result of this President's policies. The situation is getting worse. President Biden's response to the buildup to the war in Ukraine has been mismanagement and weakness. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Joe Biden issued sanctions on Russia that are far too little too late. The Biden deterrence was after the fact. That didn't seem more like punishment than deterrence. It reminds me when President Obama said he was going to be leading from behind. Deterrence after the fact is the same thing as no deterrence at all. Try to deter someone from doing something. Even after the invasion has occurred and even after we see the tanks lined up heading into Kyiv, Joe Biden is not yet ready to sanction Russian energy and clearly not ready to produce American energy to make up for what we buy from them. His Deputy National Security Advisor went to the podium and said our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world. This administration has caused plenty of disruption in the flow of energy from America, from our homeland. We are not going to disrupt energy from Russia, oh, no. It was actually Germany that stood up and finally stopped Putin from getting the pipeline. Joe Biden won't touch the one industry that is propping up Vladimir Putin. Yet he seemed to be happy--Joe Biden seems to be happy with his continued war on American energy. He has effectively put harsher sanctions on American energy workers than he does on Russian energy thugs. The war in Ukraine is going to lead to higher energy prices in this country; there is no doubt about it. But we have seen no change in Joe Biden's energy policies in spite of the abundant energy resources we have in this country. The White House Press Secretary was asked recently if Joe Biden was considering allowing more energy production here at home in the United States. We have the resources; we have the workers; the jobs are necessary; and, effectively, she just said no. We heard nothing about it in the State of the Union last night--not a thing. Over the weekend, actually, the President's Press Secretary went on television and doubled down. She said she refused to rule out importing oil from Iran. Oil and gas leases on Federal lands are still in limbo. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC--and there will be a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee tomorrow--recently decided, in a 100-percent partisan 3-to-2 vote, to make it even harder to build natural gas pipelines in America. Harder. The day after Russia invaded Ukraine, this administration, the Biden administration, said uranium was no longer a critical mineral for the United States--no longer a critical mineral. American businesses get half of the uranium we use from Russia and its partners. It is a critical mineral but not according to the Biden administration. Now we are going to become even more dependent on Russia, and Putin will get even wealthier. It seems like Joe Biden and his advisers want to turn our energy sector into what we have seen over the last number of years in Germany--dependent on other countries, begging enemies to help us keep the lights on. And just before the Russian invasion, John Kerry, the President's Climate Envoy, said in an interview with BBC--this is the former Secretary of State of the United States--said he was concerned that the war in Ukraine would distract people from his climate agenda. You can't believe it. This is very disturbing to people all around my home State, and I would think all around America. This is a delusional obsession, distracted from the reality of the world and of our Nation. Innocent people are being slaughtered. Vladimir Putin is conducting nuclear drills. People around the world are terrified. People are looking to the United States for leadership, and we have a high official of this administration concerned it is going to distract from this White House's and this administration's climate agenda. The American people know what we need to do. We need to continue to support and send lethal weapons to our friends in Ukraine, and clearly we need to produce more American energy. We have it. We have it in the ground. This administration will not let us get it out. More American energy will help us at home. It will help bring down prices at home. More American energy will help us defund Putin's military aggression. It is our energy dollars that are paying for Putin's killing machine. More American energy will help our allies from being held hostage by Vladimir Putin. This is why I have introduced legislation called the ESCAPE Act, Energy Security Cooperation with Allied Partners in Europe. It expedites the sale of natural gas from America to our NATO allies so they don't have to buy it from Vladimir Putin. I brought it to the floor yesterday, and Democrats objected to a unanimous consent to pass it. I sent a letter to the President today with every Republican on the Senate Energy Committee as well as Senator Lummis--sent a letter to the White House today detailing 10 specific actions that the President of the United States can take right now to produce more American energy and undermine Vladimir Putin and help other NATO allies and help the people of Ukraine. We as a nation are much better off selling American energy to our friends than for us as a nation to have to buy energy from our enemies. More American energy means more American strength and more American security. I yield the floor.