Mr. President, as I speak here today on the U.S. Postal Service Reform Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a cruel, unjust, and barbaric war of choice, financed by a global addiction to…
Mr. President, as I speak here today on the U.S. Postal Service Reform Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a cruel, unjust, and barbaric war of choice, financed by a global addiction to fossil fuels, an addiction which Russia is only too happy to exploit right now.
And the most effective way to reduce the long-term security threat to Ukraine and Europe and the United States and the whole world is to say that we are going to empty Vladimir Putin's oil-and-gas-funded piggy bank, setting ourselves and our allies on the course to a future powered by domestic clean energy.
We can use the power of our Federal Government to not only apply sanctions but also destroy Putin's dirty energy business model.
The U.S. Government has 700,000 vehicles in its fleet, and 160,000 of the U.S. Government's vehicles belong to the U.S. Postal Service. Our Postal Service could play an important role in destroying the Putin business model by committing to clean instead of dirty energy to fuel its fleet. And it should start by reversing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's short-term decision to buy dirty, new postal trucks, energy- inefficient postal trucks, gas-guzzling postal trucks.
As we import oil from Russia, we don't need a new fleet of gas- guzzling postal vehicles in the United States because if we don't get a truly next-generation electric fleet of postal trucks, we need the next generation of Postal Service leadership delivered express to the American people.
This is just the latest stop in DeJoy's disastrous postal route, and it is time for him to resign. This is just a leftover agenda from the Trump years, this commitment to inefficiency, to the consumption unnecessarily of oil and natural gas in our country.
The Postal Service Board of Governors and the Biden administration just can't let this bad business, bad-for-climate, bad-for-health decision stand. If DeJoy won't get rid of this decision, the U.S. Postal Service should get rid of him, especially at this moment where Russia is fueling an unconscionable invasion of Ukraine with oil money from the United States.
It is the American people who have been paying $20 billion a year for Russian oil coming into our country to put in the gasoline tanks of the United States. And then he takes that money and uses it to buy tanks and planes and weapons to invade the Ukraine.
A new fleet of electric postal trucks would receive a stamp of approval from the American people as it would lower costs, reduce pollution, and provide public health benefits while backing out the Russian oil that comes into our country every single day.
Louis DeJoy wants to claim he doesn't have the money to go electric, but that false statement should be marked ``return to sender.''
One study found that full electrification would save the U.S. Postal Service $4.3 billion over the lifetime of the fleet. In other words, going all electric saves money for the American taxpayer because going all electric is cheaper than going all gasoline or all diesel. We just save money, but we don't have to send any money to Putin to run our Postal Service because that just doesn't make any sense in 2022.
Since taking office in 2020, Louis DeJoy has tried to pinch pennies at the U.S. Postal Service, so why is he now proposing a fiscally irresponsible plan that leaves $4.3 billion on the table instead of in U.S. Postal Service's budget?
If our new postal fleet is made up of vehicles that get less than 10 miles to the gallon, no better than the vehicles already in use, we are going to be tying our mail delivery system of the future to the dirty oil, inefficient oil, inefficient vehicle strategy of the past.
We shouldn't be proposing the Postal Service use the same energy from the time of the Pony Express, and these vehicles that we are using today move at about the same speed as the Pony Express.
It is time for us to just think smarter and not harder. That is all electric. That is backing out oil. That is just saying that we can have an infinity sign next to the efficiency of these vehicles which we are driving and not this 10-mile-a-gallon, 1930s, 1920s view of how efficient the postal vehicles in our country should be.
So this is simple. Electric postal trucks are cheaper. Electric postal trucks are cleaner. And this isn't charity; it is business. And you don't have to take my word for it. Ask some of our most successful companies in the mail delivery industry.
These are the competitors to the Postal Service. The Postal Service is constantly coming up here saying that we need more subsidies; we need more help to compete against these private-sector competitors. Well, UPS just placed a 10,000-vehicle purchase order for electric trucks. FedEx is moving to achieve a fully electric fleet by the year 2040. And Amazon is purchasing 100,000 new electric delivery vehicles; that is 20 times more than our U.S. Postal Service is planning to get under Louis DeJoy.
These trucks also would work for UPS routes today. Ninety-six percent of USPS routes are compatible with electric postal routes. Electric vehicles aren't the future; they work for us, for our budgets, and for our energy security right now.
We need to protect our planet, and having all electric vehicles just dramatically reduces the greenhouse gases that we emit. But we also have to protect our national security. We have to be telling Russia that we don't need your oil any more than we need your caviar.
And the only way to do it, ultimately, is for the United States--you just find a way to break our addiction. And the way to break our addiction is to just move to the kinds of transportation, automotive, U.S. Postal Service vehicles that don't need oil and still get you just where you want to go.
So that is our challenge right now. And we need to protect everything--everything--our health, our environment, our economy, our national security, and our own morality by ensuring that we move in this direction.
And we need to protect our planet and our Postal Service by putting a ``Forever Stamp'' on our transportation future, a fleet of battery- operated electric vehicles that will usher in a clean vehicle revolution in America and destroy the demand for oil and gas so that the business model of Russia is destroyed.
This is the weapon that we can be using. This is the message we should be sending to the rest of the world. So I urge the White House, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Congress to take any and all possible steps to right this wrong decision from Louis DeJoy. The U.S. Postal Service needs to tear up this deal and buy a clean fleet, and if it doesn't, it needs to get a clean start without Louis DeJoy, who is looking at the world in a rearview mirror.
You have to look straight ahead to this all-electric vehicle future. Let's ensure that the Postal Service's next-generation delivery vehicles create a livable world for the next generation, not only of America but as a model for what the rest of the world has to do.
What I hear from my Republican friends, what I hear from the American petroleum industry is, well, the Biden administration should just open up more leases to drill for oil, open up more leases immediately for more drilling.
Well, here is the problem with the Republican Party; here is the problem with the American Petroleum Institute: The oil industry, the oil giants, have hoarded thousands and thousands of leases on public lands all across the United States, and they have not drilled on them.
I have introduced legislation for years saying: Use it or lose it. You want the lease? You say it is imperative? You are going to pay for that lease and then you don't drill on it?
Do you know what they are doing? They just hoard all of that land, and the land is the size of huge States in our country. That is how much land they have right now or that is owned
by the American people and leased to the oil companies.
So they want to start drilling? Why did you bid for all those leases in the years gone by? Do you want to know why? They want to use this whole Russia situation as an opportunity to get even more leases that they won't drill on and to get them cheap and to create a false sense of emergency here, when, if they want to drill, they have already got all of the leases they would ever need. They have a backlog of 20 years they haven't even started on.
So when you hear these crocodile tears from the American petroleum industry, from the American prevarication industry, that is what it is all about. If they wanted to drill, they would be drilling right now-- onshore, offshore. They have the leases. All they want to do is just get more and more and more and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper from the American people, while fighting to stop an all-electric vehicle revolution, stop a wind and solar revolution in our country. That is what their agenda is. That is what the American Petroleum Institute is all about--it is stopping an all-electric revolution; it is stopping a wind and solar revolution; it is stopping a battery revolution--because it destroys their business model as well, while hoarding leases, not drilling on them, and then coming in here hat in hand, demanding, in a lot of ways, that we give them even more leases that they are not going to drill on. They are just going to hoard it and save it for years, decades, generations to come. It is sad. It is a sad commentary on American corporate greed, but that is where we stand right now.
So just be prepared to hear more lies from the American oil industry, lies that go right to the heart of what we really have to do as Americans for the next generation, and that is to stand up to those oil companies, stand up to the Russian oil oligarchs, and say: We are moving away from you historically. That is what young people in our country want. They want us to unleash our technological innovation genius in order to solve this problem, and it is wind, it is solar and all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies. And it is a moral challenge for us. It is a national security challenge for us. It is an environmental challenge for us. It is an economic challenge for us.
We can already see the impact this oil control of the global economy has upon ordinary consumers in America and the rest of the world. Inflation is spiking--oil. Russia is invading Ukraine--oil. A new U.N. report says that we now have an evermore dangerous warming of our planet--oil. And what did they do? They continued to lie. They continued to try to control our agenda so that we cannot pass the legislation to unleash our technological genius. That is our greatest strength. Their greatest strengths are their natural resources, but ultimately, our greatest renewable resources are the brains of the American people, especially the younger people, because if they were unleashed to invent and deploy all of these new technologies, it would revolutionize not just our country but revolutionize the whole rest of the world.
We gave the young people in our country in the 1990s and the early 2000s a chance to do that with our telecommunications system. It is now called the internet. It is called broadband. Young people did that. We have to give the same opportunity to young people to do the same thing so that we back out the oil, we revolutionize the way in which we transport ourselves, and we give hope to the rest of the planet that the United States is going to use all of its resources to accomplish that goal.
I yield the floor.
Reserving the right to object.
Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and to explain why to my colleagues here in the Senate.
This is an unfortunate, terrible exploitation of a crisis in Russia by the oil and natural gas industry of the United States of America. They have no shame. They have no conscience. They have no sense of decency.
This industry, this unscrupulous industry led by the American Petroleum Institute--really the ``American Prevarication Institute,'' which is what we are hearing here today and what we have heard on airways with tens of millions of dollars of television ads saying we have just got to ``drill, baby, drill'' here in the United States, that that is the answer to the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians.
Well, a few facts might be helpful so that the American people can understand, once again, that all the American Petroleum Institute is about is tipping consumers upside down at the pump and shaking money out of their pockets. That is who they are.
So just a few facts here: The oil industry in the United States has bid for leases on American public lands. Right now, 53 percent of the leases that the oil industry, the natural gas industry of the United States have onshore in our country--in our forests, in our fields--they are not drilling on them.
Fifty-three percent of all the leases that they have from the American people, have they been drilling to protect us against this day? No, they have not.
What about offshore? Well, offshore, the oil industry is not using 77 percent of all of their existing leases off our shores. Right now. And what do they do? They come in here with crocodile tears, if only you would give us more leases, if only you would take more of the American people's land and give it to us, then we will drill.
Well, this is just hypocrisy on stilts. This is just, again, the American Petroleum Institute engaging in exploitative profit-making actions, and the Republican Party, sadly, is cooperating with them in this time of crisis for the short-term benefit of the American Petroleum Institute--which should hang its head in shame about this debate that we are having right now, when 77 percent of all the leases offshore they haven't drilled yet; 53 percent of all the leases onshore they haven't drilled yet.
And by the way, that area, you want to know how big it is? It is just slightly smaller than the State of Arkansas. In other words, they have got almost an Arkansas of public lands that they already own, they are already leasing from the American public, and they are not drilling on it. That would be every square inch of Arkansas. They are not drilling.
What they do is they bid low for all the leases. They keep them. They wait for the day when the price goes high. Then they start drilling. They just hoard them. And they are looking for this as another opportunity to hoard more--to hoard more.
Now, the President has responded by deploying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the short term. There are 600,000 barrels of oil a day that come into the United States. Thank God our Strategic Petroleum Reserve has 600 million barrels; in other words, you can deploy 600,000 barrels every day for 1,000 days out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make up for the Russian oil. We can do that right now.
But one thing that we should never do is just get stampeded by this oil and gas industry greed. This industry that has blocked our movement to all-electric vehicles, blocked our movement to wind and solar, blocked our ability to blunt the need to have oil for our vehicles, natural gas for our homes because it is inconsistent with their business interests, their profit-making. They should just be ashamed of what they are doing here today--ashamed.
And the Republican Party should have no part of it. GOP should not stand for ``Gas and Oil Party.'' That is what we are hearing here today. That is what I am listening to.
And if we are going to respond, let's respond together as a nation. Let's not break this down into partisan politics, special interest politics in our country. Let's come together as a nation. Let's work to ensure that we are protecting ourselves, that we are protecting consumers.
And if the American Petroleum Institute wants to be part of this, there is nothing stopping them from bringing out 2 or 3,000 rigs this week, starting to drill on an area the size of Arkansas, waiting for them, so the oil can start pumping--not waiting to go through a whole leasing process, bidding process. They can do it right now. And you know what is going to happen? They are just going to sit there because they are making a bundle. They are tipping people upside down. They are exploiting this.
And by the way, let's not understate the partnership which American companies--some key oil companies--have with the Russians. That is real, too, right now. Let's just not forget the whole history of this. How do we get here? How do we get bad foreign policy? How do we get bad national policy? How do we get bad oil and gas policy? How do we get it? Well, ultimately, behind the curtain in almost every instance you find an oil and gas interest somewhere involved.
And we are hearing it here today. We are hearing it here today. They want to drill off the coast of Florida. They want to drill off the coast of Maine or, at a minimum, they want the leases so they will be ready someday to be able to do it. That is their goal. And meanwhile, they just sit on their hands, not drilling, not drilling on an area the size of Arkansas because they know the less they do that is the more that we can create a panic in our country, with false answers--answers that may work on FOX, but it doesn't work in reality. It just doesn't work. It is just wrong--plain wrong--to be using this as an issue right now for the benefit of the ``American Prevarication Institute.'' And behind this whole curtain of dark
money in our country looms the largest voice, which is the oil and gas industry of our country.
So we have got a chance here. We have got a chance to respond in the short run with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, getting our allies to produce more oil, asking our own American companies to produce more oil, and then passing out here on the floor the tax breaks for all- electric vehicles.
Now, I will give you a little number. If we just deploy 15 million all-electric vehicles, we would back out all the oil from Russia, just 15 million all-electric vehicles. The next 15 million backs out all of the Saudi oil. The next 15 million backs out all of the oil from the Middle East.
You want to do something? You want to terrify them? You want to destroy their business model in Russia or the Middle East? That is what you should be doing. But, no, what we hear from the Republicans is we are not going to support any of that agenda: no money for wind, no money for solar, no money for all-electric vehicles, no money for new battery storage technologies--no, no, no, no to the long-term solution for the next generation of Americans, young people, pages here in the well who want to know what is the plan for the long term.
So that is the sad fact of what is happening here today on the floor. So, from my perspective, we don't need to be throwing good land and waters at bad actors in our society. It just is wrong. We shouldn't do it. And as a result, I object to the motion of the Senator from Arkansas.
