Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Environment and Public Works Committee joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business today to discuss the importance of the United States leading through strength and continuing to support Ukraine. He also emphasized the need for a comprehensive plan to unleash American energy resources. Excerpts and the full video are below.
On Peace through Strength:
“The whole concept of peace by strength is about deterrence. It’s about having strength that deters bad people from doing really bad things, whether it’s the 150 nuclear missiles in the ground in North Dakota or sanctions. It does help explain why Joe Biden was reluctant and refused to issue sanctions prior to the invasion. In pretty much everything [Biden has] done, even the things he’s done right, he’s done late. So, he has this tendency to let the bad guy behave poorly first, and then come in as though these are punitive measures as opposed to deterrents. It would be a really crazy idea to issue a whole bunch of sanctions, which will have a negative impact not only on Vladimir Putin in Russia, but lots of people throughout the world, if it wasn’t going to manipulate behavior in a better way.”
On the Biden Administration’s Late Response to Putin’s War on Ukraine:
“We should have gotten more lethal weapon systems into Ukraine when it was easy rather than waiting for the invasion to happen. We should have had faith in them. You know I visited Kyiv not that long before the invasion – it was actually mid-January. I was impressed by how confident Ukrainian leadership was. I was very impressed by the details of their battle plan, their defenses, and their organization including, by the way, their militia, their national guard as well as their active military… We should have been more helpful early on.”
On a “Marshall Plan” for Energy:
“I’ve gotten to know a lot of these bank presidents. Of course, they have their ESG statements and they sound a bit woke in public but when you have a private conversation about the destruction of the American economy as they transition to more aspirational, clean energy goals, they’re really quite pragmatic. But none quite as bold in his rhetoric as Jamie Dimon. I would very much like to have him come out to North Dakota to see Project Tundra and see how we’re actually doing the things others are just talking about. We can unleash this incredible American ingenuity and innovation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions like we’ve been doing in the United States and share that with the world. I think the geopolitical moment, the window is open now. We just have to take the 2022 reality and override the 2050 aspirations. We can do both, but we can’t unilaterally disarm our own economy.
“It’s an important balance. These are capital-intensive industries. They require more than a six-month certainty. Whether you’re talking about 5-year, 10-year certainty of a pipeline, the 20-year certainty of a low-cost baseload fuel source in a multibillion-dollar plant, or uranium, there are a lot of things we can do in the United States. But you have to have more than just a few weeks of certainty. You can’t just turn the valve on today and get back up to previous production levels and then turn it off in six months when we want to get back to wind farms and hydrogen. We need to do it all in sync. Most of this really is regulatory in its nature. For example, we have something like 2,200 of those 9,000 leases Joe Biden likes to talk about on federal lands in litigation. The only thing a liberal loves more than regulation is litigation. We need that we need to have a comprehensive plan. [This is] why I like Jamie Dimon calling it a Marshall Plan, but it requires everybody with all of their varying goals to get together and use reality instead of fantasy.”
On President Biden’s Upcoming Budget:
“I’m going to keep an open mind until I get it. I have a phone call already lined up with the budget director, who I have great respect for. But you’re right, the allocation of resources – and by the way, they are limited resources although they seem like they’ve been limitless lately. We are in a time of crisis. We need to re-establish and rebuild our military. We’re using up a lot of the stockpiles of certain weapons systems in Ukraine. Our allies need more, so we are going to have to look at our priorities, look at the moment, and do what needs to be done.”