Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Environment and Public Works Committee, joined CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning to discuss Putin’s war on Ukraine and the Biden Administration’s disastrous energy policy. Excerpts and full video are below.
On Putin
“He’s having a much more difficult time than he thought going into Ukraine. The waterways are important to him. But you wouldn’t think [Putin would] want to take on the entire NATO Alliance and that’s what he’d be flirting with. But at the same time, I’m not sure we’re dealing with a real sane Vladimir Putin here.”
“There’s no question he has [d]evolved into a much less rational and strategic leader than he was even a few years ago. That’s something we’ve had to watch closely, but it’s also why we should be arming the people of Ukraine better. [The Administration has] been dragging our feet at every turn. They’ve made a lot of decisions to send lethal weapons and more aid – the President just announced another couple $100 million worth – but we should have done a lot more a lot sooner in a pre-emptive effort.”
“[Putin has] demonstrated aggression once thought impossible. He’s not very disciplined. Now, the hope, of course, is that his own people and some of his own leaders that surround him will put a halt to this but so far, his isolation and his aggression are prevailing.”
On MiGs
“Personally I don’t think we let Vladimir Putin determine what we do. He made the decision to invade. We should have done more to preempt that. Now that we’re this far into it and he’s that close to Poland – and frankly the fact that President Zelensky asked for these MiGs – I think we should have green-lighted them at the beginning.”
“Remember it was on March 6 that the Administration green-lighted those MiGs going to Ukraine. Four days later, when Poland chose to go through the United States as the arbiter, the United States changed its policy… I think we ought to give [Zelensky] all the tools they need to prevent him from doing it. We need to dissuade [Putin] from being as aggressive as he is.”
On Energy
“I’ve talked to a number of producers in North Dakota. Remember we have a number of smaller independents, we have some more mid-size, Continental Resources types, and then we have the large ones including Exxon, and so they’re not all created the same. But they are capital-starved largely based on signals being sent by the Biden Administration on a regular basis. The nomination of various members of the Federal Reserve for example. There’s a chilling effect on every move. It’s a symbol of the larger issue of really bad signals being sent, whether it’s in regulation, taxation, flirting with Maduro in Venezuela or the Ayatollah in Iran to fill the voids. North Dakota is down about 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day from our peak. If the right capital messages are being sent to the markets, I think we could pick up another couple hundred to 400,000 barrels per day. But the investors have to get the right message. And this has to be at midterm to long-term play. You can’t simply say, ‘Okay, we’re going to allow drilling now for the next couple of months. Go ahead and invest hundreds of millions of dollars.’ We ought to have a long-term play on the transition to renewables and we should agree to that, and at the same time, meet the moment and meet the crisis. And by the way, could we just ground John Kerry’s airplane?”