Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, joined Larry Kudlow on Fox Business to discuss permitting reform and how the divided 118th Congress should pass permitting or regulatory reform to unleash American energy. Excerpts and full video are below.
On Permitting Reform:
“I think it would be great if Kevin McCarthy’s very narrow House Majority takes up an H.R. 1 and there’s some type of permitting reform or regulatory reform quickly that they could send over to the Senate that we could at least take up. I don’t know that it would get out of Chuck Schumer’s top drawer. That’s the problem. In the Senate, the majority leader controls the entire floor. So that’s the problem we have in the Senate particularly now with the 51-49 [Republican] minority. The two votes that separate us from the majority make it difficult. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do [permitting reform]. We need the American public to see the contrast and I’d be all about that.
The reasons I didn’t support [Sen. Manchin’s permitting reform] package, a package I helped work with Joe Manchin on very closely, was because they ended it before we could agree on something – particularly as it relates to federalizing the electric grid, which is really an enhancement to the Green New Deal. So the reforms that they were promoting weren’t reforms in our direction, they were reforms to the Left. Now there were some good reforms for things like oil and gas and pipelines and whatnot. I’d be supportive of those, but on net it was worse than doing nothing. Worse than doing nothing is not a compromise.”
On the Need to Export American Energy:
“I just came from a classified briefing about Ukraine. Believe me, going into this very difficult winter in Europe without Russian gas is really scary for Europe. It’s not them wanting to help Vladimir Putin, it’s them wanting to survive this winter. We have not stepped up the way we could and should have stepped up as a nation that produces a lot of natural gas and oil. It’s a national security risk and an economic risk and really just dumb policy.”