Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, joined Larry Kudlow on Fox Business today to discuss Russia and energy. Excerpts and the full video are below.
On Russia’s Financial Support for Far-Left Climate Groups
“It should shock us, but for some reason, it doesn’t shock me to know Russia and the American Left are colluding on a political agenda. It benefits each of them in their own respective countries. The Green New Deal is a socialist agenda, as admitted to by [Alexandria Ocasio Cortez]. Russia naturally likes socialist agendas. At the same time, it paves the way in markets for Russia to sell its much dirtier fossil fuels. And guess who doesn’t benefit from this? The environment. The environment doesn’t because American fossil energy is so much cleaner and produced with much higher standards – environmental standards, labor standards. The greenies get their political agenda here and Russian misinformation once again influences policy in the United States.”
“I think every organization that’s received money from Russia ought to be under investigation. Remember we spent millions of dollars and several years investigating ‘Russian collusion’ with the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration only to have President Trump exonerated. We ought to spend a fraction [of that] and we could probably get to the bottom of this collusion, which has a very negative impact not only on our economy but on the environment. And, of course, [it] helps fund not just Russian oil and gas, but Russia’s war right now.”
On House Democrats Efforts to Ban Energy Development on Federal Lands
“While there’s obviously a lot of room in liberals head[s], I do not want to get in and try to understand it. Because this is hypocrisy. It is anti-American. It’s anti-environment. Just imagine what they’re suggesting. They’re advocating for very high [gasoline prices] to force people to purchase a car that hasn’t been made, that they’ll never be able to afford, [and] that requires a supply chain which comes largely from China. If we want to just acquiesce everything to our enemies let’s continue down this crazy path. I’d rather use the incredible ingenuity and incredible natural resources of the United States of America to build up a peaceful world and our own economy. This includes, by the way, oil and gas, coal, nuclear electricity. It also includes lithium and all the critical minerals we need to bring more manufacturing for every type of energy source back to the United States. [This] would be good for the world. [This] would be good for the environment, our economy, and national security.”
“Even though the President likes to talk about 900 or however many thousand leases on federal lands there are, the reality is the timeline for getting a permit to drill has increased by multiples. It’s just one more chilling regulatory effect on capital. What we ought to be doing is encouraging [production] not just with our rhetoric, but with our actions. I’m talking to lots of oil and gas executives [of] all sizes [and] all shapes and trying to find out what we should be doing to get capital investment back in your industry here in the United States of America.”