Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
BISMARCK – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Fox and Friends on Saturday morning to discuss the Russian war on Ukraine, the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, and President Biden’s war with the fossil fuel industry. Excerpts and the full video are below.
On Ukraine
“There’s no question there is risk. War has risks. Doing nothing has almost no risk it just has a certainty of innocent people being killed. We’re leaders of the free world. We have some responsibility… We’re talking about the right to defend yourself with weapons.”
“The United States, unfortunately, has been chasing the entire time. Remember many of us were urging President [Biden] to preempt this invasion by putting harsh sanctions on [Nord Stream 2] before the attack. He kept saying ‘no, no, no we’ll wait until they attack. When they attack we’ll ban their oil.’ Every step of the way, he’s been a step behind.”
“Listen, the two presidents that deserve the most credit for unifying the West are Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and the latter most recently has been spectacular in unifying people against Vladimir Putin.”
On the Omnibus Bill
“You’ve been around Congress long enough to see the deterioration of the process of committee work, of debate, of appropriations in 12 tranches rather than one giant one. I mean, we’re in the [sixth] month of the fiscal year that we just funded. That means we’re less than half a year from the next fiscal year needing to be funded, and they haven’t even started that process. The problem is there’s a lack of transparency [and] a lack of due diligence when you have just the leaders of the two political parties and the two chambers negotiating these giant omnibus spending bills.”
“I voted against it even though there are a lot of things in it that I like. On balance and the process I voted no and that was a tough vote. I don’t mind telling you. I don’t like to be that person. But we’ve got to bring fiscal discipline back.”
“The House [of Representatives] before they sent the bill over did separate the defense side of it from the domestic spending side of it. They then put it together and sent it over to the Senate. We did not have that opportunity. [This is] just unfair to every member and to every person [who] represents them. So I think it’s a process issue as much as it is what’s in the bill issue.”
On Energy
“Remember the Keystone XL pipeline was first stopped when [Biden] was the Vice President. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State who was responsible for giving advice to President Obama on the presidential permit in the first place. The Keystone XL pipeline is a symbol of the broader problem. [Biden] sends the wrong messages every single day to the fossil industry. Remember, nobody in the world does energy development better than the United States of America. Nobody does it better than North Dakota. We can have a very long conversation on the solutions if we all just get together and talk about it.”