The Daily Signal - Rep. Garret Graves: America Can Take These Steps Toward Energy Independence

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

As gas prices rise, the Biden administration is “looking for someone to blame, and unfortunately they really just need to turn and look at themselves,” Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., says.   The Biden administration “talks about environmental sustainability, [but] they don't think about economic sustainability as well,” Graves says, adding that when it comes to energy policy, President Joe Biden seems to be “governing by emotion, not by fact, science, and economics.”  Graves, who heads the Energy, Climate, and Conservation task force for the House's GOP caucus, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” from the House Republican Issues Conference in Florida to discuss Biden’s mishandling of American energy policy, and what lawmakers can do in the long and short term to lower gas prices and move the country back toward energy independence.  We also cover these stories: President Biden proposes a $5.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2023. A federal judge says it’s likely that former President Donald Trump and a legal adviser, John Eastman, committed federal crimes by trying to prevent Congress' certification of the 2020 election. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs into law a bill designed to prevent teachers from offering instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to children in third grade or younger. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 29th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Virginia Allen. With gas prices continuing to rise, I know that many of us are asking, what is the solution? Is it possible for America to become energy independent? And why are things like pipelines so controversial? Republican Congressman Garrett Graves of Louisiana says that it seems like the Biden administration is allowing their energy policy to be guided by emotion. instead of facts. I had the opportunity to sit down with Graves at the House Republican Issues

Conference in Florida and ask him these questions. I'm excited to share our conversation right here with you all on the show today. But before we get to that conversation with Congressman Graves, let's hit our top news stories of the day. On Monday, President Joe Biden released a proposed budget for fiscal 2023. The budget's total comes to $5.8 trillion. So what exactly is in this budget. Well, first off, it's intended to reduce the nation's deficit over the next 10 years by raising taxes on billionaires. It also includes $1 billion to assist Ukraine and another $6.9 billion for the European Defense Initiative, NATO, and combating aggression from Russia. $30 billion is allocated for state and local law enforcement, community violence intervention programs,

and crime prevention. Biden's proposed budget also includes funding for some of his big policy priority items, including $18 billion for climate resilience programs and gives $81.7 billion over the next five years to the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare for any pandemics in the future. So is this budget really a good use of America's taxpayer money? I think that's the question many of us want to know right away. Heritage Foundation policy analyst for the Institute for Economic Freedom, David Ditch, is here with us to answer that very question. David, thanks so much for joining.

Happy to be here. So is this a good budget? What are your initial thoughts and reactions? It's amazing to say that this is a better budget than they produced last year, but last year's budget was incredibly insane. This year's budget is merely regularly insane. What do you mean by that? I break that down a little more. So last year's budget, they were calling for something like $5 trillion with a T in spending increases, $3 trillion in tax increases.

Now they seem to be pulling back on the spending in light of the fact that they can't even get most of the spending agenda passed through a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. What they're keeping is the massive amounts of tax increases. And while their headline for the tax increases is we're going to tax the heck out of the billionaires, the reality is the biggest tax increases are going to be levied on businesses. They are going to undo one of the most important aspects of the 2017 tax cuts, and they're going to kneecap the post-COVID economic recovery right at a time when it's very fragile by, reducing incentives to invest and also making businesses less competitive with our competitors abroad. So when you start taxing businesses and large corporations heavily, doesn't that usually affect the

employees, the middle class employees who work for those businesses? It absolutely does. It has ripple effects throughout the economy. You're talking about slower wage growth. You're talking about slower job growth or even negative job growth. you're talking about less investments in businesses, in machines, and that means that businesses are doing less business with other businesses. And then those businesses have less money to hire and to give wages. Okay. So Biden says that this budget would lower the nation's deficit by one trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Do you think that's accurate?

That is wildly optimistic on their end. And part of it is they think they can drive up taxes on businesses dramatically and there won't be any side effects. They see business tax revenue in nearly doubling within the next couple of years. But that assumes, again, that businesses do the same amount of investment. that assumes that it doesn't hurt economic growth. In fact, they believe that the economy will grow faster if we pull money out of the private sector and funnel it into a bevy of new federal spending when history is shown that the opposite tends to occur. Interesting.

To follow David Ditch and his work, you can find him at the Heritage Foundation.org. David Ditch, a policy analyst in the Institute for Economic Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. David, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. According to a federal judge, it's likely that former President Trump and his legal advisor, John Eastman, committed federal crimes by trying to prevent vote certification during the 2020 election. On Monday, U.S. District Judge David Carter asserted that the pair engaged in criminal conduct in a 44-page decision surrounding whether some of Eastman's private communications should be provided to the special panel investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Eastman refused to turn over documents to the select committee, claiming attorney-client privilege. And out of 111 documents Eastman attempted to keep private, Judge Carter ruled that 10 were privileged, but that 101 had to be turned over to investigators. Carter wrote, based on the evidence, the court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. According to Carter, it was likely that Trump committed at least two felonies. obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Carter's decision, however, won't impact whether or not Trump faces criminal charges.

Florida teachers are no longer allowed to give classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade. Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the legislation into effect on Monday during a press conference saying the need for the bill became clear over the past couple of years, per Fox 13 Tampa News. The last couple years have really revealed to parents that they are being ignored increasingly across our country when it comes to their kids' education. We have seen curriculum embedded for very, very young children, classroom materials about

sexuality and woke gender ideology. We've seen libraries that have clearly inappropriate pornographic materials. for very young kids. Contrary to some rhetoric from the left, the bill does not ban the word gay in schools. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Republican Congressman Garrett Graves as we discuss the path forward

for America's energy independence. Americans use firearms to defend themselves between 500,000 and 2 million times every year. God forbid that my mother has ever faced with a scenario where she has to stop a threat to her life. But if she is, I hope politicians protected by professional armed security didn't strip her of the right to use the firearm she can handle most competently. To watch the rest of Heritage expert Amy Swearer's testimony on assault weapons

before the House Judiciary Committee head to the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel. There you'll find talks, events, and documentaries, backed with the reputation of the nation's most broadly supported public policy research institute. Start watching now at heritage.org. YouTube and don't forget to subscribe and share. Gas prices are at an all-time high. Everyone is asking, is there an end in sight?

Well, here with us to answer that question is Congressman Garrett Graves of Louisiana, who also serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for being here. You bet. Thanks for having me. So Congressman, President Biden has said that high gas prices are a result of Russia invading Ukraine. and the U.S. making the decision to no longer buy oil from Russia. Is this accurate? Is Russia really to blame for our high gas prices at the pump? Well, first of all, it's important to bring a little bit of

facts into the question here. So you can go back and you can look. And immediately after the presidential election in 2020, you began seeing a slow creeping of gas prices, just an anticipation of what was going to happen. When President Breastard's, Biden was sworn in on the first day, he signed an executive order stopping new energy production, stopping projects that had already been approved and were in the implementation process. And from then on just went through and threw up obstacle and impediment, obstacle impediment, to U.S. energy production. So you similarly saw a consistent increase in prices from his inauguration day on.

Now, did prices go up again at a faster rate when Putin invader? Ukraine, yes, but the reason was is because during the last year, President Biden increased our dependence upon Russian crude oil by 161 percent. And so if we had just produced more domestically, we wouldn't have needed the Russian oil, which meant that when they banned Russian oil, it wouldn't have had any impact on the United States. So these were all self-imposed problems. They're looking for someone to blame, and unfortunately, they really just need to turn and look of themselves. Well, and we've even, speaking of blaming people, we've even seen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lay blame at the feet of oil companies in America. She said, you know, that we call on industry to

boost production and stop hoarding profits. Are these companies doing that? Are they hoarding profits? Are they stunting production? Well, Virginia, just think about it for just a minute. If you, if you had the ability to produce a lot more energy and you see where prices are today, where you could make, hundred-plus dollars a barrel of oil, gas prices have significantly increased for natural gas as well. Why would you sit there and hoard it or keep it into ground? Now, have there been some actions by the administration to create uncertainty or to impose more regulations and restrictions on our American energy industry? Absolutely. They're doing all these environmental and social justice goals. We recently had the Securities and Exchange Commission tell companies

they have to report their greenhouse gases to the securities and exchange commission, a financial-related federal agency. And so they're thwarting or they're blocking investment in oil and gas and American oil and gas. They're imposing new regulations. They're imposing new costs. Everything that you're seeing right now related to higher energy prices really are self-imposed by this administration. I'll say it again. This was preventable. And how is it preventable? What are the things that the Biden administration should have been doing. Well, so if you look back during the Trump administration, we maintained price certainty. You saw much more consistent prices. Another fact that you don't ever hear discussed in the media,

we actually had lower greenhouse gas emissions and we had higher energy security or self-dependence, energy independence, as former Interior Secretary Zinke used to refer to it. So this isn't, this isn't something, oh gosh, we have to do Operation Warp Speed. This is simply go back and reverse the flawed policies that you put in place that got us in this quandary today. Well, and, you know, I've spoken with a number of people recently who have brought up the Keystone pipeline and who talk about how construction should have continued on the Keystone XL pipeline. How would that affect American oil production? I mean, won't, won't it take years for the Keystone pipeline to really, to be producing oil and really getting oil to the American people.

Well, first, let's take a look at their decision. They said they rejected it or shut it down or prevented the project from moving forward because they said it would result in greater greenhouse gas emissions. Yet just the other day, the White House press secretary said that all of the oil was being produced anyway. It was just being transported by different measures. Look, if you're concerned about the environment, lowest emissions is a pipeline. Safest way, fewest spills is a pipeline. So what are you doing? And at the same time, they lifted restrictions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to allow Vladimir Putin to build his pipeline while restricting ours. So look, I've got to be truthful here.

If the project, if the Keystone Project wasn't stopped, would it solve all of our problems today? No, it wouldn't solve all our problems today, but let's keep in mind. You know, you started out asking about what the future looks like, and we're not on a trajectory to solve this problem. We're not on a trajectory to see significantly lower prices right now. So we need to be thinking not just about what's the solution for today, but what's the solution for a year from now, from five years from now, from 10 years from now, to where we get ourselves out of this hole that the Biden administration has dug us into. Yeah, well, and we've seen from the Biden administration that, I mean, they're starting to consider, okay, where do we buy oil from if we're not buying it from Russia, looking towards Venezuela, Saudi Arabia. What's your response to this? Look, if you think that going from one authoritarian regime or dictator Vladimir Putin to turning to Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or what they're pushing on renewable energy plays into China's hands, I mean, do you really need to continue to put your hand on the stove and get burned over and over and over again before you realize, hey, maybe I should stop doing that?

We can't double and triple down on these strategies that don't work. And it's not just other countries. Look at states like California that have been very aggressive on their climate change initiatives. They've got the eighth worst emissions growth in the nation. They're the most dependent state on foreign energy, twice the electricity rates of my home state of Louisiana. Like, which of these things do you think is successful that you want to model after? These are destructive policies you've seen mistakes in the UK where they tried to move to win too aggressively and didn't have sufficient energy sources up in New England. They stopped with natural gas pipelines, had to bring in liquidified natural gas from Russia, from Vladimir Putin.

I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Shame on this administration if they can't learn from successes and failures. The successes of the previous administration, the failures of states and the UK and Germany that tried to move too aggressively in a different direction. It's not going to have an outcome any different than we've seen in these other places. Is there anything that lawmakers can be doing to get gas prices down right now? I think that there is, there are things we can be doing in the short, mid, and long term. And I think that, you know, unfortunately, some of the options we have available to us for the short term are limited because they thwarted, the Biden administration thwarted American energy production because they have put so much regulatory hurdles and burdens in front of our industry. But I do think that releasing additional strategic petroleum reserve energy, working with our American oil and gas producers,

and giving them predictability and regulatory relief, stopping the blocking of investing in our conventional energy industry in the United States. Those are things we can be doing in the short term. But it can't just be that. We've got to recognize you have to resume domestic production of energy for our kind of one-and-five-year strategy, for a 10-year strategy looking at the increasing role that inevitably renewable energy sources are going to play, and even things like next generation nuclear, small modular reactors and others, there are opportunities there, but it's going to take a plan, and we're going to have to have the regulatory compatibility, the investment compatibility with it. Everybody in the Biden administration talks about environmental sustainability. They don't think about economic sustainability as well, and it's a really important part of the equation that all of them seem to have just forgotten because they are governing by emotion, not by fact, science, and economics. I want to get your thoughts on Pete Buttigieg's tenure, a secretary of transportation.

What grade would you give him? Well, first of all, personally, had the chance to meet with him, talk to him. I think he's a really nice guy. So just personally, I do. I think he's a nice guy. One of the first things that they did when they came in is they said, hey, we're going to introduce new criteria that's going to guide how we hand out money for infrastructure projects. It's going to be climate change, racial equity, environmental justice. enhancing union opportunities. They came later and said they're going to look at how they can change

the trajectory of marginalized communities and historically disadvantaged communities. So, you know, look, those things, I don't have a problem with some of them, but how do you measure how a road project affects environmental justice or racial equity? I'm not real sure, and the reality is there's not criteria to really measure that. So when they came out and they started doing their multi-billions of dollars in grants by home state of Louisiana, one of the highest African-American populations in America, one of the states most susceptible to sea rise. After $2 billion was handed out, we got $18.5 million, and it was to increase fair collection for New Orleans transit system.

I mean, so one, I don't, I think that they politicized, they politicized these investments, which roads and bridges shouldn't be political. They started giving out grants for infrastructure to address health inequities. and building 13 road and bike, excuse me, walking trails and bike trails, with gas tax revenues, they're supposed to go to roads and bridges. So I think that they've really kind of distorted what America's priorities are in regard to our infrastructure needs and addressing traffic solutions and mobility solutions. And then lastly, on the regulatory side, in the infrastructure bill that I opposed,

they did have a provision that I was supportive of that tried to, to expedite the regulatory approval process. It takes seven years to get through an environmental analysis on a road. And so there was language in there that expedited it. To date, they've just ignored it. It's in the law, and they've just ignored it. So it's been pretty frustrating working with them. Yeah. I want to get your thoughts on something that's a little bit more kind of in the weeds of this conversation around energy policy, and that's fracking. And we know from environmental groups. Anytime you kind of say the word fracking, there's a lot of pushback right away. Could you explain just a little bit first about what is fracking and then do you think it's

an effective solution to actually solve some of the energy crisis that we're facing right now? Sure. So fracking has really just been a revolution in the United States. It's caused an energy revolution. We are the top natural gas producer in the world and we're one of the top producers of oil. That has largely been the result of kind of this fracking revolution. And I guess the, an easier way to explain it would be that instead of just going after these large reservoirs of oil or gas that may be beneath the surface, you actually go in and create more pressure and rock formations, which then causes some of the trapped oil and gas to come out. And so, you know, that's largely what fracking is and does. And we found in Texas,

in North Dakota in Pennsylvania, in my home state of Louisiana in Ohio, we have found huge reserves of energy there that we've been able to produce, we've been able to help increase the affordability or decrease energy prices in the United States. We're now exporting natural gas to 36 countries, so instead of them being dependent upon Russia or others, they're getting it from the United States, economic activity, jobs here. We're exporting oil. I believe it's to a dozen countries around the world. So look, the reality is, and this is where this administration doesn't seem to understand, the reality is, is that even the Biden administration says there's going to be a 50% increase in global energy demand over the next 28 years, 50%. It's going to come

from somewhere. Why not produce it here where we produce it cleaner and safer than anywhere else in the world, or at least in the top three, rather than letting Vladimir Putin produce it, letting Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. look, I'm all for American jobs. Those are the people we represent. I want American economic activity. I really don't have a strong desire to go employ folks, Russians and Iranians and others. Venezuela is just not really what our priority should be at this point. So fracking's been a revolution. It's been great. There's been a lot of, I think, misinformation. You know, one factoid from the National Energy Technology Labs, Russian natural gas is about 41 percent dirtier when delivered to

Europe as compared to fracked gas in the United States. So it's actually lower greenhouse gas emissions better for the environment. So there's really not an upside to leave it in the ground based on energy demand right now. Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, and I think we hear this term thrown around a lot of energy independence. What does that actually mean, though, for America? What would that look like for America to no longer be importing any oil gas from other countries? And, I mean, are there geopolitical advantages to importing oil from other countries, or do you think there's actually more advantages to not importing anything? Well, we can take this conversation really far south and get into heavy crude, light crude,

sweet crude, sour crude, and sort of some of the global markets there. But I'll avoid that and not put people to sleep and just say that, look, having economic relationships with other countries is certainly, you know, know, something that I think is helpful if you create economic relationships in many cases, not all. You develop better allegiances in other areas as well, maybe defense cooperation or what have you. And so I think that you can't look too myopically at the United States. I think you have to do it from a lens of what's best for the United States and for our citizens that we're supposed to be prioritizing and representing. but energy independence or energy dominance, this was actually achieved. We had net energy independence in the United States and by some measure in 2019, but certainly in 2020 during the Trump administration.

And so what that means is that we may be importing some energy if we needed a heavier oil or what have you from another country, but we were exporting more of that volume than we were bringing in. It's at the end of the day. We were a net exporter of energy. You know, let me say it one more time Virginia this is it very important so there is going to be a huge surge in demand for natural gas demand for oil demand for renewable energy technologies nuclear energy technologies and all these things why not have that come out of the united states employ americans on the on the exploration and production side the manufacturing the pipelines the exporting of it why not let that be americans versus going out there and having these citizens of other countries that just take those

dollars and then challenges militarily or maybe our economic interest or our allies around the world. It just doesn't make sense. And unfortunately, I'm going to go back to a term I used before, I think the energy price crisis that we're experiencing right now is entirely a result of inexperienced policymakers making bad decisions based on emotion, not fact, and now Americans are paying the price for it. Congressman, thank you so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it. You bet. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast.

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