WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks Thursday on the Senate floor regarding energy and national security:
"Last week, a U.S. company announced it had reached an agreement to begin exporting American liquefied natural gas to Ukraine for the first time.
"That's good news – for our friends on the front lines of Russian aggression, for allies across eastern Europe, and for the workers and producers behind some of America's most affordable and reliable energy.
"Exporting American abundance is a win-win proposition. And it's one that our closest trading partners in Europe have increasingly recognized as an opportunity to offset their reliance on Russian gas.
"But, setting aside last week's good news, the Biden Administration is still chronically confused about the role that affordable and abundant American energy can play as a geopolitical tool, a source of American leadership, and an engine of our economy.
"In a joint pledge issued two years ago, President Biden committed to help reduce Europe's reliance on Russian energy and increase global energy security. Then, a few lines later, he reiterated his commitment to the unenforceable virtue signals of the Paris climate deal.
"Sometimes, it seems that cognitive dissonance is the most powerful force in the universe.
"Remember, the President who continues to insist he's serious about helping America's closest allies resist the predations of Putin's Russia is the same President who made stunting American energy development a Day One priority.
"He's the same one who decided not to intervene when he had a chance – before Russia's escalation in Ukraine – to block the expansion of European reliance on Russian gas with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
"And of course, this is the same President who earlier this year issued a de facto ban on new permitting for LNG export infrastructure that will make it harder for American producers to respond to demand for reliable alternatives to Russian or Iranian energy.
"As I've discussed at length, Russia's escalation in Ukraine prompted some of our closest European allies to finally start investing seriously in their own defenses. And it's also been an opportunity to rethink their dangerous overreliance on Russian energy.
"Back in February, one German state-owned energy provider was in the process of switching from buying Russian gas to buying American gas, instead. But that plan was stifled by the Administration's decision to appease its activist base instead of reinforcing America's allies.
"So last week brought good news. But here's the rub: this new commitment to Ukraine relies in part on the completion of a new LNG export facility that is stuck in the Biden Administration's regulatory purgatory.
"And even as already-permitted infrastructure comes online, producers who want to create new American jobs and expand their capacity to meet foreign demand are out of luck.
"Since 2016, American LNG had been a remarkable success story. It had driven our economy to become a net energy exporter. And just last year, even in the shadow of the Biden Administration's war on energy, the United States was the world's largest LNG exporter.
"But this year, Russia has overtaken the United States in gas exports to the European market. And it might have something to do with a ban one of our former Democratic colleagues, Mary Landrieu, described as, 'throwing a match in a bale of hay.'
"We might describe the President's ban as a tremendous missed opportunity.
"But that would under-sell the predictably disastrous consequences.
"In the face of a dangerous world, the Administration's obsession with performative climate policy is taking meaningful levers of American power simply off the table."
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