Protecting Rural Seniors’ Access to Care Act

Mr. President, the American people are being told once again not to trust their own eyes. Democrats are telling them not to worry about their soaring electricity bills, telling them to ignore rolling blackouts. Republicans are just fearmongering, they say. But, of course, the reality is that Americans have seen the power shortages. They have paid the higher bills. They have felt the weight of the past 4 years of the failed policies of the Biden administration, and we cannot ignore the resulting crisis anymore.

The power grid is buckling, energy demand is exploding, and the very people who created this mess are now telling us, quite audaciously, that there is no emergency. Why? Well, they claim that the United States is producing more energy than we have in American history, but what they conveniently omit is that we are consuming more energy than at any time in American history, and we are expected to need much, much more within just the next few years--much more than we are producing, much more than we ever have produced.

So it is not enough to just look at how much we are producing relative to what we have produced in the past when you don't take into account the demand, what we need, and what we need is going way, way up.

Now, according to Goldman Sachs, artificial intelligence alone--just artificial intelligence, nothing else; not population growth, not any other uses, household or industrial, of energy--just artificial intelligence alone is likely to drive a 160-percent increase in data center power demand by 2030. The largest data centers can consume more power than 700,000 households. That is equivalent to the energy use of a city of 1.8 million people.

But there is no emergency, according to them. According to the sponsors of this resolution, this is just a handout. It is a handout to Big Oil, as they characterize it.

Now, good luck with that. Try telling that to the American families and businesses that struggled during the January 2025 polar vortex when the U.S. power grid was pushed to its absolute limits. Electricity demand hit historic

highs, forcing grid operators to rely heavily on coal and natural gas-- the very sources of power that Democrats want to eliminate and have been working aggressively, with some effectiveness, to do precisely that: to eliminate--just to keep the lights on.

It is not Big Oil that will suffer in the winters if we fail to keep the power on.

Across multiple power market regions, electricity demand during that event set new single-day records, as heating demand across sectors spiked. In response, grid operators had to rely heavily on dispatchable generation--primarily coal and natural gas--to ensure system reliability and stabilize supply during the extreme event.

Now, during that time, coal-fired powerplants dramatically increased their electric power output--that is, those coal-fired powerplants that have not yet been torn down at the demand of Democratic-backed policies. In many regions, coal capacity factors soared above 80 percent, far exceeding typical winter levels.

On the other hand, wind and solar were challenged by unfavorable weather conditions. On peak days, wind and solar generated only 3 percent and 0.2 percent of the incremental electricity needed to meet demand.

But what exactly are Democrats worried about? What is their concern amidst that very emergency? If that is not an emergency, I don't know what is. What is it they are worried about? Not grid failures. Not surging energy costs. Not the reliability of our power supply. No. No. They are concerned that President Trump is making things worse by canceling the wind and solar projects that failed to generate enough power to meet demand at those peak moments when it was so badly needed.

They are using the same old playbook that they always have: Do anything to prevent President Trump from getting a win regardless of whether his policies might actually bring relief to the American people, which, of course, they would.

I have spent my career fighting against unchecked Executive power. I authored the ARTICLE ONE Act to curb the abuse of Presidential emergency declarations, requiring congressional approval within 30 days. But let me be clear. This is not an abuse of those powers--not by a mile; not at all; not in any way, shape, or form. It is a real emergency, and if President Trump's declaration were put to a vote today, this Chamber would affirm it.

Congress has had countless chances to fix this problem and failed every time. Republicans have fought for years to reform our outdated permitting laws, only to be met with Democratic resistance at every turn. NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act--Democrats treat these laws as if they were sacred texts, untouchable even when they are clearly broken; a sacred text that can't be not just repealed but even amended meaningfully to avert the disaster that they have created--especially created in the hands of the previous administration.

Now, at this moment, we hear that they are ready to play ball. Now and only now do they say: Oh, yeah, we need to deal with this. Now, if that is true, great, but let's see. If Democrats are serious about fixing it, now is the time to prove it. Until Congress acts, how can anyone really blame the President for stepping in to address this emergency? Which it is, which it has become, which it undeniably is. In some cases, an emergency can be created by the government itself or at least severely exacerbated, and that is the case here.

His Executive order tells Agencies to do exactly what Congress has neglected to do for years, exactly what Congress has been unable to do--in large part because Democrats have resisted that, getting back to the sacred text theory of these same laws that have become part of the problem.

However, rather than working with President Trump and Republicans in a productive way to try to make energy more accessible for Americans and more reliable and, of course, remain affordable, Senate Democrats are forcing a vote on a resolution to terminate President Trump's declaration and reinstate the restrictive energy policies from the Biden administration's Green New Deal.

Look at where those policies have left us, where they have put us, where we are, and where we are headed. Energy prices increased by 30.54 percent, gasoline prices increased by 30.5 percent, electricity prices increased by 28.55 percent, and natural gas prices increased by 33.3 percent.

Meanwhile, Democrats' message to American families is clear: Pay more, expect less.

That is the sort of gospel of scarcity, the idea that we have to live off of scarcity because that is what they demand because government wants it that way for reasons that only they can fully articulate but that the American people do not find persuasive.

This is a problem. The United States is, in fact, in an energy emergency--not because of a lack of resources but because the Biden administration's unrelenting regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production in blind adherence to the climate cartel has put us in this position.

Now, President Biden's Executive orders--including orders he issued on his very first day as President of the United States back in January of 2021--pausing all new oil and gas leasing on Federal lands, where nearly 25 percent of U.S. oil production occurs, significantly hindered U.S. energy independence.

Even after courts mandated the resumption of these leasing programs essential to our energy development, Secretary Haaland slow-walked the process, offering the fewest acres for lease since World War II and holding a record-low number of offshore lease sales.

The chilling effect of the Biden administration's anti-production policies is as undeniable as it is indefensible as a matter of public policy. Oil companies are withdrawing from investments in Federal lands due to the uncertainty created by erratic leasing decisions and hostile regulatory policies.

Now, let's remember, of course, this is made more severe by virtue of the fact that the U.S. Government is not just the largest landowner in the United States, but it owns around 28 percent--between one-quarter and one-third of all land in the United States. We compound that by giving enormous discretion to Federal land management Agencies, to the executive branch, and then you put in place an administration that wants to preach and live by the gospel of scarcity, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Biden's EPA contributed meaningfully to the problem as well. The Biden EPA introduced methane fees starting at $900 per metric ton in 2025 and increasing to $1,500 over just a fairly short period of time. That imposes significant financial burdens on producers, particularly small operators.

Now, lest anyone led by the Democratic talking points might be tempted to look at this and say ``Oh, but they are businesses. They can afford it. Suck it up. Just deal with it,'' that is not really who pays for this, no. These things get passed on. The wealthy folks--at least the wealthy folks who own these businesses--they are not the ones hardest hit by this. Those hardest hit are American families, particularly in low- and middle-income brackets, those who, like so many Americans, live paycheck to paycheck. It is those people whose way of life, whose livelihood, whose ability to afford life is so dramatically affected by these regulatory intrusions into the marketplace. Those are the people who get hurt, and that really is a problem.

Meanwhile, as our domestic production slows, our reliance on foreign oil increases. In 2023, we imported 1.3 million barrels per day from OPEC, up nearly 50 percent from 2020 levels. Meanwhile, critical mineral dependencies on foreign nations--particularly China--threaten everything from titanium in pacemakers, to cobalt in batteries, to copper in transmission lines and antimony in semiconductors. The absence of just one of these minerals would devastate the sectors they serve. Yet the Biden administration, with its vast discretion as it invented and reinvented Federal regulations and as it presided over this Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations--laws put in place by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats--can make those things much worse, and it did make those things much worse, and the American people, hard- working Americans, are paying too high a price.

The American people are done. They are done with Joe Biden's failed policies. Over 77 million Americans voted

for President Trump just a few months ago, and a recent poll shows that 60 percent of Americans support expanding American oil and gas production.

Senate Republicans will not let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer. They have created and exacerbated an emergency. President Trump is addressing it, as the law allows him to do. We will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results that the American people justifiably expect, demand, and truly do deserve, because the facts are undeniable. America is in an energy emergency because of the Federal Government and specifically because of the previous administration's failed policies.

Instead of embracing abundant, affordable, and reliable energy, Democrats--again preaching and living by the gospel of scarcity to which they are so closely wedded--are doubling down on a radical agenda to make everything, from gasoline to electricity, more expensive for working families.

Remember, as the price of those energy inputs goes up, so, too, does the price of everything else because it becomes more expensive to make, to process, to buy, to sell, to transport all of those same things.

Instead of learning from those failures, Senate Democrats are trying to block President Trump from taking action to fix it. What? Are they too afraid that their own policies will be exposed as the source of a significant amount of the problem? You will have to ask them about that. But one could certainly make that argument, and it certainly appears to many that this is the case.

They are standing in the way of relief for American families, hoping that if they delay long enough, the American people will simply accept high costs as the new normal. Only in Washington could you light the house on fire and then act shocked when someone else tries to put it out. Make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here.

We refuse to let that happen. We applaud President Trump for taking action to address an emergency created by our own government--presided over, directed, embraced, and now defended by the Democratic Party.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution.

Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that will take place, during today, about S.J. Res. 10, which is a resolution that my colleague Senator Heinrich and I have filed to challenge President Trump's day-one declaration of a U.S. energy emergency.

And you will hear from a number of our colleagues today, expressing the basic point that the declaration is a sham. There is, in fact, no emergency, but it has been declared so as to gut various environmental laws passed by Congress, still part of U.S. statutory law, in order to advantage certain kinds of energy--i.e., oil, gas, and coal--and punish other forms of energy--wind, solar, et cetera.

I am very, very happy to have the support of my colleague Senator Heinrich, who is the energy expert on the Democratic side in this body, and very, very happy to have so many colleagues who will be speaking on this matter today on the Senate floor.

President Trump took a number of actions on his first day in office, and many of them got a lot of attention. One that didn't get so much attention was his decision, on day one--on day one--to declare that the United States was in an energy emergency and, therefore, we needed to bypass environmental laws.

I want to dig into the sham nature of the emergency declaration and then explore why President Trump actually has done this, and, finally, conclude with a request to my colleagues that the article I branch should not just roll over and play dead when a President

declares an emergency that does not actually exist.

So let's first talk about the claim that President Trump has raised that the United States is in an energy emergency.

This is a chart that shows U.S. energy production from 1950 until essentially today. The chart goes through about 2023 and does not include the 2024 numbers. But I am proud to stand here and tell you, especially as one who has supported many of the policies that have led to this growth in American energy, that America is producing more energy today than at any point in the history of this Nation. America is the leader in the world in energy production, and for the last few years, we have been an energy surplus nation, producing more than we consume.

You will see that the chart includes different kinds of energy--oil, gas, coal, renewable--but the direction of the chart shows steady increase in production.

Let's go into the kinds of energy we are talking about here. In 2024, America produced more natural gas than at any time in the history of this country. In 2024, America produced more petroleum than at any time in the history of this country. And in 2024, America deployed more renewable energy than at any time in the history of this country. In fact, in 2024, more than 90 percent of the energy added to the Nation's energy grid was from renewable sources--wind, solar, and battery storage.

The United States, recently, in the past few years became--there may be a technical term for this, but I call it an energy surplus nation. We produce more than we consume. That moment happened in 2019, when our production started to outpace consumption. In every year since 2019, that surplus has grown, and the surplus in 2024 was at record levels. And it is a good thing to produce significantly more than we consume.

Why is it a good thing? Because we are able to sell energy to others, reducing our trade deficit.

I participated with Senators in lifting the ban on export of crude petroleum a few years ago, and that plus exports of liquid natural gas have helped us with our trade deficit. But more directly related to this moment in time, the export of American energy has also helped us help other nations that are reliant on energy from petrol dictators. The nations in Europe that had to rely on Vladimir Putin, nations in other parts of the world that have had to rely on Iran or Venezuela, now, increasingly, are able to access U.S. energy.

I was in Finland over the weekend, visiting Virginia Guard troops exercising with the Finnish Army. Finland is importing liquid natural gas from the United States and using it for their own energy needs and also for the energy needs of other European nations.

So where is the emergency? More oil than ever, more natural gas than ever, more renewables than ever, and a record surplus of production over consumption.

Where is the emergency? The emergency is not in the energy sector. The emergency is Donald Trump self-creating an emergency, because Donald Trump in other actions taken in the first week of his administration has gone full tilt to challenge energy projects that are creating jobs and lowering prices all across this country.

Donald Trump and his administration are attacking wind projects. They are attacking solar projects. They are attacking clean energy projects that aren't oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. And by doing so, they are reducing supply and likely raising prices on American consumers.

There are a number of projects in Virginia, as an example, that have benefited from tax breaks that were included either in the Inflation Reduction Act, for clean energy projects, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, for rollout of electric vehicle charging, for example. President Trump's administration has attacked those projects, has put them on hold, and the Virginians who were intending to invest billions of dollars hiring people to build these projects are now uncertain about what they can do.

Why would a President declare an energy emergency and then attack homegrown clean energy projects in my State and elsewhere? And that is exactly what President Trump is doing.

Why would he do that? Well, we don't have to speculate about the answer. We know the answer.

In the summer of 2024, President Trump held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with the CEOs of major oil and gas companies, and they reported upon the substance of that meeting. And here is a headline from the Guardian, and other publications carried the same news: ``Trump promised to scrap climate laws if U.S. oil bosses donated $1 billion'' to his campaign.

One of the oil executives at the meeting quoted Donald Trump saying: ``You'll get it on the first day.'' Oil and gas will get preferential treatment on the first day, with end runs around environmental laws passed by Congress that are still part of the statutes we take an oath to implement in our jobs. And, in fact, the oil and gas guys did get it on the first day.

What did the Trump fake energy emergency deliver to those he had promised to support? Here is what was delivered in the emergency order. The President said: There is an emergency, and so we need to bypass laws passed by Congress. We need to bypass the Clean Air Act. We need to bypass the Clean Water Act. We need to bypass the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act.

Because of this fake emergency that he has created out of thin air, we need to take all of these laws that Congress has passed--many of which have been in statute, like the Clean Water Act, for more than 50 years--and we need to give energy producers and transmitters the ability to bypass these laws in order to produce and transmit energy.

It is interesting, though. When you read the Executive order, it talks about energy production, but you have to go to the last section of the order to read what ``energy'' means. And President Trump is calling for a national emergency and bypassing all of these laws, if you want to produce using oil or gas or coal or nuclear or hydro, but not for wind, not for solar, not for clean battery storage. If your homegrown American low-cost energy is wind, solar, and battery storage, you don't get to bypass environmental laws. You have to comply with the letter of the law as Congress intends. We are only giving a break to the guys who supported Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry.

Donald Trump is so willing to give away the farm to Big Oil and Gas that he even, in the first provision in the emergency order, said: We also need to bypass property rights. He encouraged Federal Agencies to make aggressive use of eminent domain to produce fossil fuel energy.

Those watching understand what this means. Eminent domain is the government taking the land from private property owners, and there is a set of rules in the Federal Code about when you can use eminent domain for energy projects, but Donald Trump has said: You know what, if you want to do oil, coal, and gas, you don't have to follow the rules. You can even take people's private property by bypassing the rules for oil, gas, and coal--but, of course, not for wind and solar, not for wind, solar, and battery, the clean energy that has been 95 percent of the power added to the grid just last year.

So we know what the game is. ``You'll get it on the first day,'' Big Oil, and they did. And Donald Trump is now giving them an E-ZPass lane to speed by clean energy projects that are lower cost and cleaner because he told them he would do it if they supported his campaign.

This is no emergency. It was declared for a corrupt purpose, and it is an unacceptable effort to undermine laws passed by the article I branch. And so I am on the floor with my colleague Senator Heinrich-- and I am going to yield to him in a second--to just ask Congress: Be Congress. Be the article I branch. If a President can just stand up and make up an emergency and then gut laws that Congress passed, what is to stop President Trump from making up another emergency and gutting other laws? What is to stop any President, Republican or Democrat, from fabricating a complete emergency and using it to gut laws that Congress has passed?

You know, if President Trump doesn't like the Clean Water Act--I happen to like it. I don't think it is perfect. But the Clean Water Act has

helped us to restore the James River in the city of Richmond, where I live, which won an international river prize a couple years ago as the most improved river in the United States. A river that was a sewer, that was closed off to fishing for 50 years, now has fishing, swimming, rafting, kayaking, bald eagles that had been extinct along the river because of chemicals now breeding in one of the most dense population of bald eagles in the United States. I like the Clean Water Act. I think it served a valuable purpose for 50-plus years, but maybe President Trump, who was elected, has decided that the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act or property rights protections have outlived their usefulness.

And if he has decided that these laws have outlived their usefulness, well, he has got two Republican Houses. He can introduce a bill to repeal the Clean Air Act or repeal the Clean Water Act. That would be the right way to do this, not invent a bogus fake emergency and unilaterally gut these laws.

But the President has got a problem. If he introduced the bill to repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, not even Republicans--some Republicans would--but not even Republicans would support it. In two Republican Houses, he would have zero luck in repealing these laws that have protected the public health and the environment. So his attitude is, Wow, I could benefit my Big Oil cronies by repealing these laws, but that is a nonstarter in the article I branch. So why don't I kick the article I branch to the side, create a fake emergency, end-run them, and that is how I benefit my cronies.

Congress should stand up against this and vote for S.J. Res. 10 because it is the right policy, and we shouldn't gut these provisions, except by doing it in the course of ordinary legislative business, should that be the will of the appropriate majority of both bodies. That would be the way to do this.

So I am asking my colleagues to stand up and support S.J. Res. 10. This would be horrible policy. But more than a horrible policy on these laws, it would also set a horrible precedent, a precedent that a President of either party can invent a sham emergency and then grab away from Congress powers that Congress has under article I.

Let's not be sheep in this place. Let's not have this be the ``Silence of the Lambs,'' just doing whatever Donald Trump says he wants to do, with the article I branch not saying or mumbling a word, not willing to issue a peep, not showing a backbone, not showing a voice. We have got a backbone; we have got a voice; but more importantly, we took an oath to a Constitution that gives Congress certain powers. We should not let the President trample on those powers.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Virginia for bringing this resolution to the floor.

And it was a little less than a year ago, I met with workers at several manufacturing facilities in New Mexico. These are the workers who are making the solar and wind technologies that are generating record quantities of clean, affordable, American-made energy. And at a groundbreaking ceremony for Array Technologies, at their factory in Albuquerque, I met with over a dozen New Mexicans, and they told me about the impact of our investments on their lives, their abilities to support their families.

I talked with folks like Ramon Romero, who joined Array Technologies as an entry-level machinist, worked his way up to have a career as a production manager.

I met with Daniel Beltran, who explained how Array's expansion has created new job opportunities for himself and many others in his community. He told me that the company's growth has been ``life- changing'' for him.

And I met with Ray Muddaluri, who spoke about how significant a role Array has played in supporting her growth as a young professional and her ability to serve her community.

Here is what every one of those New Mexicans had in common: They were able to create better lives for themselves, better lives for their families, because of the jobs that were available for them. This is what I mean when I say these industries, these clean industries, are creating careers that New Mexicans and other Americans can build their families around in their home communities.

And thanks to the investments that Democrats made in the last few years, we have seen record growth in new American manufacturing facilities. More than 400,000 new jobs have been announced across the country as a part of this ``Made in America'' clean and affordable energy manufacturing boom. In New Mexico, we celebrated the first wind towers coming off the line at Arcosa Wind Towers, a new factory in Belen. It was a shuttered plastics factory. And now Arcosa's workers are creating the huge steel towers. They are heading straight to the SunZia Wind and Transmission Project, a 3\1/2\ gigawatt project. That project, SunZia, brought in more than $20 billion to States like New Mexico and Arizona in capital.

And when it comes online, it is going to generate more clean power with its wind turbines than the Hoover Dam. It is the largest ever built clean energy project in the Western Hemisphere. America is actually building big things again. So these projects have enormous scope.

But our affordable, American-made energy boom is already under threat because of the uncertainty that President Trump has foisted on the energy sector.

And if you are thinking about opening a new factory, like Array or Arcosa did in my State, you don't know what your tax structure will be after the Republicans take up their Trump tax bill. If you are trying to site and build a new transmission line, the Federal Agencies and the staff that you work with just had their expert staff sacked, making it hard to get a permit when no one is on the other end of the phone.

And thanks to Trump's so-called national energy emergency, many of the lowest cost, 100-percent clean additions to our grid can't get permits.

Make no mistake, Americans' electric bills are going to go up. I am going to say that again: Americans' electric bills are going to go up because Trump and his loyal Republicans are picking winners and losers on the power grid.

That is why I am joining my friend and colleague Senator Kaine to force a vote to put an end to all of this before any more damage is done.

And I want to be clear about something, and certainly Senator Kaine raised this point, but America is the world's leading energy producer. And before Trump injected all of this uncertainty, our country was producing record quantities of both conventional and clean advanced energy. There is no energy emergency. It was made up to skirt the law. It was made up to favor some sources and not others.

But if Trump gets his way, his faux declaration may very well create a real emergency, an energy emergency and an economic emergency.

I also want to be clear to my colleagues across the aisle that this clean energy phenomenon has created 400,000 jobs around the country. But most of them--most of them--are in Republican-led States. This is not a red States or a blue States issue. This is about good-paying, blue-collar, skilled jobs in all of our States.

So what is at risk because of all of this? Let's take a look. In North Carolina, there is a new nearly $13 billion--with a ``b''--$13 billion Toyota battery plant, which will employ 5,000 workers.

Where are we getting our batteries now? We are getting them from China. This is progress. This is putting Americans to work to make batteries here.

In Louisiana, First Solar announced a billion dollars for a new solar energy project that is projected to create 700 new jobs, making that technology here, not being dependent on China.

In Kentucky, Ford is building a new battery plant, which will employ another 5,000 workers and manufacture batteries here instead of China.

In Georgia, an estimated billion dollars in projects to modernize the power grid--and our power grid needs a heck of a lot of modernization. We are going to have more and more demands on this grid in coming years, especially with the growth of data centers and AI--a billion dollars sidelined to upgrade that power grid in Georgia.

Do we really want all these jobs to disappear because President Trump

wants to create a war on affordable, American-made, clean energy? Do we want to import more batteries from China? I don't because that is what is going to happen if we turn our backs on these factories and these energy sources.

And among other things, Trump's so-called national energy emergency declaration would allow his administration to use eminent domain, one of the most controversial powers that a government can have, to take private land for oil and gas infrastructure at the expense of our American jobs and livelihoods.

As we speak, President Trump's chaos and incompetence are jeopardizing and fueling the real energy emergency in our country. Trump's plans to eliminate dozens of advanced energy tax credits, those have unleashed more than $165 billion in private sector capital, moving into over 1,000 factories and expansions across the country.

The President has also halted many of the Department of Energy's loan guarantees, which will further jeopardize the U.S. energy manufacturing expansion and will lead to higher energy bills for millions of Americans.

This is blatant hypocrisy, as Trump's favorite billionaire ``bro'' Elon Musk actually took a $465 million Federal loan guarantee from that same Department that literally saved Tesla from bankruptcy in 2010.

And when these massive, multibillion-dollar construction projects stall, it is not Trump's billionaire friends who will suffer; it is everyday Americans who work in these factories. It is all the families who will be stuck with higher electric bills.

I want to emphasize something that my colleague from Virginia raised. More than 90 percent of the electricity generation projects currently in line to connect to the grid all across this Nation--in red States and in blue States--waiting interconnection are clean energy projects. They are wind, solar, storage, nuclear.

Just last year, 93 percent--93 percent--of new electricity generation was carbon-free. That is a record. We added 52 gigawatts--50 nuclear power generating station quantities' worth--of solar, wind, and storage to the grid in the last year alone. There is a reason for that. In addition to being clean and carbon-free--and many of the big companies that procure energy care about that--these power sources are cheaper, they are faster, they are less capital-intensive than older technologies, like coal-fired plants or gas turbines.

Put simply, clean energy is the cheapest electricity on the grid. You can see it right here. Onshore wind and solar are by far the cheapest. We have combined cycle natural gas.

Guess what? You can't get a gas turbine these days. If you order a combined cycle natural gas turbine today, you are going to wait 3, 4, 5 years before that is actually delivered, without permitting.

Nuclear is great. I hope we build more of it, but we have to get the cost down. It is 18 cents a kilowatt hour, average.

If we don't plug these clean sources into the grid, especially at a time of surging demand, the outcome is obvious: Prices will go up. And it is not physically possible to stand up enough costly gas plants to keep growing power demands and keep prices down. As I said, the wait times to just get a turbine is 4 or 5 years.

If Trump has his way and he keeps blocking American-made clean energy projects, we know that significantly higher energy and electricity costs are on the way. Is that what we want to do? We want to impose on working families that are already struggling to pay for eggs--if they haven't crossed that off their grocery list already--the rising cost of milk, groceries going through the roof, rent payments going up--we are going increase their electric rates because that is what this fake emergency is going to do.

A couple of weeks ago, an Alabama utility company sent a letter to customers saying: Sorry, you owe us another $100 because what we credited you based on the law is no longer valid. Trump's EO took that away, so pony up. Write us another $100 in your electric bill this month.

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

Advanced groups who do the analysis, folks like the Rhodium Group, have looked at what his crusade will mean regarding American clean energy investments and electricity costs. And they say that, on average, American families' electricity bills could go up by nearly $500 a year as a result of these actions.

Trump's war on American-made clean energy is going to kill thousands of jobs in the skilled trades. Huge construction projects are going to get stalled. The biggest winner in all of this is going to be China. China wants to become even more dominant in the global renewable energy marketplace. They will happily take the private investment that could have gone to the United States and take those jobs back overseas. The biggest loser from this is our economic competitiveness, our national security, our families.

Trump has claimed that his so-called natural energy emergency order is needed to unleash more American fossil fuel development. He is also wrong about that. Not only is our production--13 million barrels a day on average; a little over that--not a record-producing number, but oil and gas executives will tell you the truth.

Look at what ConocoPhillips' CEO said in response to a question about this: Would he really increase production with the gloves coming off? He said, ``Not really.'' Why is that? Because American oil and gas production is already at a record high, and it is not economically advantageous to push production further. I know this firsthand because we are producing more oil and gas in New Mexico than most other States combined, with the exception of one.

Clearly, we need to put an end to this stuff that will fuel a real energy emergency, kill thousands of jobs, and raise electricity costs on American families. The most important decision of our energy future--worth hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment, factories, thousands of high-quality jobs--remains in the hands of our Senate Republican colleagues.

If you want to have an ``all of the above'' approach, if you want to continue to bring down energy costs, if you want to protect jobs for hard-working Americans in our States, and to help America remain the global leader in energy production, I would urge you to vote in support of this resolution and against higher electricity bills.

Mr. President, President Biden liked to be able to say over and over again that we are producing record amounts of oil and gas. Some of my Democratic colleagues have even come to this floor in the last couple of days and have said: We don't have an energy emergency.

Those two things together are kind of a message going out to the American people: There is nothing to see here. Move along. Everything is fine on energy.

But if you talk to electricity-generation companies, regional distribution networks, and ask them ``How are things going with electricity generation? How are we doing with capacity?'' they will give you a very different story.

The feeling is, when you walk into your own house and flick on the lights and the lights turn on, you are like: Yeah, the lights are fine; there is no emergency. But if you talk to the electric company behind it and say ``Two years from now, what does it look like for capacity for you?'' they will probably shake their head and say ``We have a problem coming.''

Now, we can either deal with that problem 2 years from now when we are having brownouts and don't have enough electricity or we can deal with it now. I would rather deal with it now so we don't have the challenges ahead.

How do you do that? Continue to be energy dominant in, actually, the energy that we are producing here in the United States and to be able to make sure that we are producing truly ``all of the above'' energy but we are actually producing energy at a price Americans can afford and at the amount Americans need.

If we are going to be the world leader in AI, if we are going to be the world leader in data centers, if we are going to be world leaders in innovation, you can't be that if you don't have the power behind it. You can't be that if the price continues to go up, up, up for continuing subsidies.

Under the Biden administration, the price of gasoline went up 30 percent--30 percent in 4 years. Under the Biden administration, in 4 years, the price of electricity nationwide went up 28 percent. Every American feels it. When we pay our light bill, when we put gas in our car, we feel it.

So now the question is: What do we do about it? How do we actually engage to be able to make this better?

Well, there are multiple things that we can do. We have already started some of those already. Quite frankly, President Trump, in his earliest days in office, stepped in and started the process of turning around some of the policies to increase more American energy so we can begin to bring prices down and availability up, because sometimes it is not just about price; it is making sure, 2 years from now, we are not running out and we are not having brownouts all across the entire Nation in our electric grid.

So there are a couple things President Trump did right away. He actually changed all the cancellation of leases in Alaska to actually drill in the area literally set aside, decades ago, for drilling. That is an area that should be a no-brainer, but the Biden administration stepped in and said: No, we are not going to allow anyone to drill in the area set aside for oil exploration in Alaska. They canceled that.

President Trump canceled the mandate for electric vehicles, not because he hates electric vehicles. There happens to be a guy who hangs around him a lot that runs a company that sells electric vehicles. The problem is not electric vehicles. The problem is the mandate to try to force Americans to be able to shift to that when we don't see that in the grid.

Quite frankly, the electric grid is not prepared, even, for Americans to be able to do all-electric vehicles, and frankly, most Americans aren't either. If you talk to Oklahomans in rural areas and say, ``Are you willing to have an electric vehicle when it is 35 miles to the next town from where you are and to be able to take the risk?'' they are not.

And even for a lot of our farmers and ranchers that will say, ``Well, there is an electric pickup out there,'' if you ask the question, ``How far does that electric pickup go if you are towing a trailer?'' the answer you will get from the manufacturers is 80 miles. Do you know what? Our farmers and ranchers need to go a little farther than 80 miles with their vehicles.

So there are a lot of issues that are out there. To be able to take the mandate away and say, ``Let people choose what vehicle they want to be able to choose,'' we think is a better option, and, quite frankly, with our grid not prepared for the strain on that long term, it is a wiser option for everybody in the process.

Decisive action has taken place on the issue of drilling in Federal waters. President Biden, literally in the final hours of his administration, put a ban on actually drilling on 625 million acres offshore. So 625 million acres that have oil and gas in them, President Biden just banned it.

Well, President Trump flipped that and said: No, we are going to allow that to be able to happen--quite frankly, as every other President has on that.

So these are basic things the President can do and has done, but what do we, as Congress, need to be able to do?

We have engaged in several areas already. We have chipped away at what we call the methane fee that has been put on. Every single homeowner that has a hot water tank that uses natural gas--or even if their electricity that is

coming into their house is produced by natural gas or they cook with natural gas--had a new fee added on to them at the end of the Biden administration. We have now voted to be able to take that away and say: We are not going to raise the prices of everybody because they happen to use natural gas to cook their food or to be able to heat their homes or heat their hot water or that they get electricity from as well.

We have also now voted on, quite frankly, a regulation that was done by the Biden administration at the very end of their time that was intentionally designed to be able to raise the price of offshore oil drilling, where they intentionally placed a new fee on any company that is drilling offshore. That could be $1 million per well. The reason for that is to try to block more development offshore on that.

What does that actually do? That doesn't decrease the need that we have in the country. It increases the number of imports that are coming into our country. So we are buying more from Saudi Arabia, more from Venezuela, rather than actually producing from our own jobs and our own locations.

I don't have a problem with ``all of the above'' energy. In fact, I have had this conversation with multiple people in this body. I am willing to put the Oklahoma portfolio for energy against any State that is here, as far as our use of renewables versus fossil fuels. Forty- five percent of the electricity produced in my State today is done with wind. We do wind, solar. We do hydro. We do oil, gas, coal. But we are working to be able to make sure that we can actually produce electricity that is needed for manufacturing and for our homes. That shouldn't be a difficult issue for us. That should be what it is actually all about.

Quite frankly, the frustration that we have had is this has been a challenge for energy companies just to produce energy in the last 4 years. This is something that should be normal. America needs energy. Every single American needs energy. Every person sitting in this room or watching this right now is using energy. We need access to that. So let's find the best ways to be able to do it.

A couple of things that we are working on right now: One is that I have a bill dealing with what we are talking about, with the tax treatments that we are all debating right now, as well, on this floor, called Promoting Domestic Energy Production Act. That act is very straightforward. It treats oil and gas companies the exact same way for taxation as every other manufacturer is treated.

Now, a lot of Americans may say: Well, they are not treated the same now? No. When Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act--which was bizarrely named because, actually, inflation spiked after that, with all they put into it. When the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, it created a new tax on oil and gas companies, specifically designed to be able to reduce new wells coming into America and increase the price of oil and gas. That was the design of it because their goal was, if they could make it so expensive to get gasoline, then more people would actually run to an electric vehicle, and they would buy an electric vehicle.

Well, guess what is happening. The more expensive gasoline is definitely happening, but more and more people aren't running to an electric vehicle. They want to be able to choose. And that is a pretty fair option for them for that. So the bill that I have actually moves us back to treating oil and gas companies the exact same way as every other manufacturer is treated in our tax policy.

There is another bill that is not just an oil and gas bill. It is called the ALIGN Act. This handles what we call bonus depreciation. When a company actually buys a big piece of capital equipment, they are going to pay their tax that year on it, but they have to decide, for that big piece of equipment, how many years it takes to be able to depreciate the value of that. The ALIGN Act just says: In the year that you bought it, you can also depreciate it, and you can take it off your taxes.

Now, this doesn't change the amount of income coming into the Federal Treasury one bit. You are either going to have it over several years or you are going to have it over one year. It doesn't change the amount at all, but it does make a huge difference to that business, in the year they do a big capital investment, that they also get to write that off on that same year.

Well, I think it is just good policy to be able to say: Let's incentivize every manufacturer to be able to do additional manufacturing. Our economy needs it right now because, when they do more manufacturing, that is more jobs in the country. And for energy, that means more pipelines, more capabilities to be able to move energy at a cheaper rate. Those are commonsense things that don't hurt our deficit as a nation but actually benefit our economy and benefit jobs.

Energy policy should be just commonsense conversation. It shouldn't be political. It should be: What do Americans need? And we should look beyond just today that the lights are on. We should at least look 2 years in the future to say what is about to happen in the country with our electric grid, anticipate the problems that are coming, and make changes in policy here to make sure we don't have an emergency there.

So let's declare the American energy emergency. Let's fix it before we have the challenges that are coming in just a few short months.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it has been almost 6 weeks--maybe a couple of days beyond 6 weeks--of the new administration of Donald Trump and his second term. It is a lot different than his first term. I was here for that occasion as well.

What we have found is unique is a blizzard of Executive orders issued by President Trump from the beginning of his administration. Among those Executive orders was his declaration of an energy emergency-- energy emergency. It turns out that claim is not based on fact. There is no energy emergency in America.

Under the Biden administration, we saw record deployment of wind, solar, biofuels, batteries, oil, gas, and nuclear. In fact, the United States is producing more power than ever. Last year, the United States of America produced more oil than any other nation in the history of the world. Yet President Trump continues to insist that America is on the verge of nationwide blackouts and that clean energy will raise prices. It is simply not true.

So what is the reason for the President to try to mislead the American people? The short answer is that he wants to give handouts to his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. Before Elon Musk showed up with his multibillion-dollar fortune, it was reported that then-Candidate Donald Trump invited fossil fuel executives to Mar-a- Lago to ask for--hold on to your seats--a $1 billion campaign contribution--1 billion bucks.

Now that he is in office, President Trump is doing everything he can to keep those billionaires happy. That means tax cuts for the ultrawealthy--which is on its way, I am afraid--opening up Federal lands and waters for drilling, and, yes, declaring this phony energy emergency.

Why is he doing it? Declaring an emergency grants the President additional statutory authority. Donald Trump is using these authorities to fast-track pipelines and drilling in the Gulf of--may I say it?-- Mexico. But there is nothing in this declaration to support fossil fuel's cleanest competitors: wind and solar.

If Trump doing the bidding of billionaires wasn't bad enough, his so- called emergency will also raise the electric bills of thousands of families. Wind and solar are the cheapest energy in the world, and those cheap prices get passed on to the families who take advantage of them.

I know personally. A few years ago, my wife and I made the decision to install solar panels on the roof of our home. Our home project gave union workers in my community a good-paying job, and it was just one project contributing to hundreds of thousands of jobs created in the Biden administration.

Since Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act was enacted 2\1/2\ years ago, more than 1\1/2\ million Americans have installed solar panels. Was it a good idea? Well, I compared the electric bills I had been receiving in my home before and after the solar panels. Before the solar panels were installed on my roof, my monthly bill was about $115 for electricity. Now it is $15 because of the solar energy.

Every one of these installations also helped to create good-paying jobs for electricians, carpenters, and other workers, and supplying those panels created thousands of new jobs at factories around the country. But President Trump is not impressed. He wants to eliminate those jobs.

We have an opportunity to undo the harms of one of President Trump's many lies today. I want to thank Senator Kaine of Virginia for leading this effort. We need to raise up American workers, lower utility bills, and put America back on track to lead the world on clean energy.

I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine measure.

January 6 Pardons

Mr. President, on January 6, 2021, a solemn constitutional proceeding was disrupted when a mob of thugs, egged on by President Trump, attacked and trashed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a Presidential election.

The grim result of that insurrection was the subsequent death of 5 law enforcement officers and injuries to approximately 140 others, many of whom are still paying the price to this day.

It came as a shock when, on the first day of Donald Trump's Presidency, he issued a blanket pardon for those who had been convicted for that January 6 attack on the Capitol.

We all saw the videos. We all saw the photographs. Here is an illustration of one of them.

Listen to what President Trump said about 1,600 pardons at a recent press conference when he was asked: Why did you pardon all those people who attacked the police officers at the Capitol Building?

He said:

I pardoned people that were assaulted themselves. They were

assaulted by our government. . . . They didn't assault. They

were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for

humanity.

The American people overwhelmingly disagree with the President, and they disagree with his decision. In fact, 83 percent of them oppose the pardons that he gave. That includes 70 percent who lean Republican in their voting.

Despite this overwhelming opposition, the Justice Department has now broadened the scope of President Trump's pardons for January 6 rioters to include separate charges stemming from searches conducted during those investigations. I will describe a couple of them to you.

Federal prosecutors recently dropped explosives and firearm crimes being pursued against two January 6 defendants pardoned by President Trump: Daniel Ball and Elias Costianes.

Ball and Costianes had both been charged in separate proceedings with illegally possessing weapons that law enforcement discovered during the January 6-related search.

Ball had been accused of throwing an ``explosive device that detonated upon at least 25 officers'' during the Capitol riot and of ``forcefully'' shoving police who were trying to protect the Capitol.

Ball was barred from possessing firearms because of his prior criminal

record. Listen to this prior criminal record of a man who was pardoned by Donald Trump: Before January 6, Ball was convicted of domestic violence battery by strangulation, resisting law enforcement with violence, and battery on a law enforcement officer.

President Trump says that poor man was assaulted by the police. Does it sound like it? Remember, President Trump told us Ball and his fellow rioters were the actual victims. No wonder so many of the January 6 perpetrators have shown a stunning lack of remorse.

Just last Friday, just a few days ago, a number of these pardoned individuals decided to hold their own press conference outside the U.S. Capitol to announce their intent to sue the Justice Department for prosecuting them for this--dangerous individuals, including former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, who had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before the Trump pardon; Proud Boy Ethan Nordean, who had been serving an 18-year sentence; Dominic Pezzola, the first rioter to breach the building on January 6, who was serving a 10-year sentence for stealing a police riot shield and using it to break a window. I will bet you saw that video. I did.

The group paraded through the Capitol after the press conference, following the same route they took on January 6, 2021. They posed for photos, chanting as they did that day:

Whose house? Our house.

After the press conference, Mr. Tarrio was even arrested again outside the Capitol for assaulting a female counterprotester.

Tarrio also posted video of himself stalking Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, former police officers who had defended the Capitol on January 6. Tarrio was following them through the lobby of a hotel where the officers were attending a conference. While Tarrio followed them, he was calling out at them that they were ``cowards'' and telling them to ``keep walking.''

Does this sound like a man ashamed of his actions on January 6 and full of remorse? Does this sound like an innocent victim of assault? No. This sounds like a man who now thinks he is above the law with his Trump pardon and expects to be bailed out by President Trump for every crime he decides to commit.

In another horrifying turn, the same hotel that I discussed earlier where these rioters were stalking policemen had to be evacuated after someone claiming to be MAGA emailed a threat about four bombs--two in the hotel and one in Officer Fanone's mother's mailbox. After listing the names of several of the conference attendees and singling out Officer Fanone, the email said they ``all deserve to die.''

These are men and women in police forces who risked their lives for Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 6.

The perpetrator of this tweet claimed to be acting ``to honor the [January] 6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump''--his words.

These are just last week's updates on the January 6 rioters President Trump pardoned. The list of crimes committed by these thugs just keeps growing longer and longer.

We must be clear that these individuals are a threat, and the more power and freedom they are given, the more danger they pose to our democracy and the law enforcement officers and families of those officers that they are harassing.

Just this month, dozens of January 6 offenders joined forces on social media to compile and publicize the identities of at least 124 individuals who had been involved in their convictions, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI agents. The post, which has received at least 60,000 views, included names, photos, disparaging remarks, and demands for accountability.

In January, another pardoned January 6 defendant who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, Ryan Nichols, Sr., identified in a Twitter post ``officers in the DC Jail who need to be investigated for corruption and abuse,'' adding the names and LinkedIn profile photos of two DC jail employees.

This is stalking and harassment of law enforcement men and women who were assigned to this Capitol to protect us. The men and women who bravely defended the Members of this body deserve better than this, and we should honor them for their heroic efforts on that day, not excuse the rioters who attacked this Chamber and the ideals it represents. Government employees should not fear for their safety or that of their families for simply doing their job.

I hope that all of us, regardless of our political persuasion, will finally agree on one thing: Violence has no place in a democracy, and Donald Trump's pardon of these 1,600 January 6 attackers is not only an insult to the Capitol Police who risked their lives to stop them but has emboldened these convicts to harass these officers and their families.

The question for the Senate is simple: Whose side are you on--the police or the rioters'?

I yield the floor.