U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) spoke on the Senate floor to urge the Biden administration to prioritize American-made energy. Specifically, Senator Murkowski highlighted record-breaking gas prices, which are hitting hard families and businesses in Alaska and all across the United States, and called for a course correction from the administration: instead of looking to foreign nations to increase our energy supply and reduce prices, we should instead focus on increased domestic energy production.

Click here for Senator Murkowski’s full speech.

EXCERPTS

• “People are feeling it [record gas prices] in their homes. They're feeling it in their pocketbooks. Families are, Businesses are. And whether you are in places like Anchorage or Fairbanks, your budgets are stretched thinner and thinner and thinner. And it's increasingly difficult for small tourist operations, whether you're trying to take people out on flight-seeing trips in the air or on the water. Our fishing fleets having to fill up their fishing vessels. But especially particularly our outlying villages. These villages that are off the road system that have already faced high prices. Now the prices are astronomical.”
• “The President has just returned from the Middle East, and it wasn't for a sightseeing trip. It was really all about oil. He was talking about oil. Above all, the President made that trip to ask the leaders of several foreign nations, members of OPEC, to increase their production levels.”
• “I think it's a great idea to do what we can to increase supply to reduce prices. This is kind of the basics of supply and demand. I've championed this for years. Let's increase our supply. But the question is where that energy is going to come from. Where should we focus our time?”
• “Why would we go abroad when we have the resources here? Why choose oil produced at lower environmental standards? You're going to countries that have lower environmental standards and track records when it comes to human rights abuses that we're just going to turn our eye. We're just going to close our eyes and say that's okay now? No, it's not okay. Why? Why do we give fist bumps to foreign leaders while sucker punching the producers, the refiners, and the gas station owners in our own domestic industry? And unfortunately, that's what we're seeing.”
• “We need a course correction from the Biden administration. Even as we are moving forward on so many other initiatives, we need to have a strategic plan that assures our own energy security is addressed and also helping to improve the energy security of our allies.”
• “I believe that we can do this without taking our eye off the ball of what we need to do to reduce emissions, to address the challenges that face us when it comes to climate. But we've got to acknowledge the world has changed. There is still, though, no substitute or equal for American energy. So, what we need is for common sense to prevail over wishful thinking. We need resource development here at home in places like Alaska. That needs to be our first and our highest priority. And the longer it takes for that to happen, the greater the price that Alaskans will be paying and all Americans will be paying.”

Related Issues: Energy

Original source can be found here.