Mr. President, with me today are two of my interns that I have enjoyed working with, Ms. Rebecca Streidel and Mr. Charlie Kay. And I wanted to--also with me--he is not a summer intern. He is one of…
Mr. President, with me today are two of my interns that I have enjoyed working with, Ms. Rebecca Streidel and Mr. Charlie Kay. And I wanted to--also with me--he is not a summer intern. He is one of my permanent colleagues Mr. John Lowery.
But I want to thank Rebecca and Charlie for working with me and for their good work. It has been a pleasure, and I hope you learned a lot. Thank you for being part of our team.
White House Correspondents' Association Dinner Shooting
Mr. President, I want to talk about a couple of subjects today. First, I thought it would be appropriate to make a comment about the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Saturday night.
I want to be clear, I was not there, so I don't know whether that helps my perspective or hurts it. But I was at home watching the NBA playoffs. The Timberwolves won, by the way.
I am sorry it happened Saturday night. I am glad no one got hurt. I think what happened is as straightforward as it is tragic.
An overeducated, underemployed, self-righteous punk from California who thinks he is smarter and more virtuous than the American people and who thinks if you disagree with him, you are not only in error, you are in sin and deserve to die, tried to crash the function and assassinate the President and some members of his administration.
Many members of our media--and, look, I am glad no one was hurt. I said that, but I want to emphasize that. Some members of the media will portray him as a victim. They will say his mom or daddy didn't love him enough, or maybe he was just mixed up or confused or had a mental defect.
They can say what they want. But I believe in free will and responsibility. And this punk was responsible for his actions, and he is going to be punished. And he, frankly, should be punished.
I want to also say a word about security.
Look, we are going to hold hearings. We love to hold hearings on Capitol Hill. That is one of our favorite things to do. And there are going to be hearings held about the security provided by our Secret Service and others. I am not saying those hearings shouldn't be held. I am not a security expert.
But I want to thank the members of law enforcement who prevented what could have been a very serious tragedy Saturday night.
I am pretty familiar with the Washington Hilton hotel, and the truth is, those who are also familiar with it know that this guy never got close. He was on a different floor. He never made it to the right floor, and that is because of our brave women and men who provide security. In fact, I thought our security showed great restraint. I was frankly very surprised that this punk didn't end up like a piece of Swiss cheese.
Mr. President, could I ask my colleagues here to hold it down for a minute? Maybe they could take their discussions off the floor.
I know they have got work to do. But I have got work to do too, and I can't hear myself think here.
Joint Meeting of Congress
Mr. President, let me say a word about King Charles.
King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress today. I thank him so much for coming. He was eloquent. He was charming. He was funny. He talked about the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. And we do have a special relationship, and I hope it can continue.
And I want to come back to the King's visit.
In preparation for the King's visit and the King's speech, I read an article, in particular, in The Economist magazine. I read The Economist magazine, anyway, every week. In my opinion--I have read it cover to cover. It is really--some call it a newspaper, but it really is a magazine.
I have read it cover to cover for 25 years. It covers the world. I have always enjoyed the reporting because it is very in depth, and it is very factual. Just about every author of every article offers his or her opinion. But it is subtle, and it is nuanced. And usually they offer their opinion after presenting both sides of the story.
It hurts me to say--it disappoints me to say--that, in the past year, The Economist has really changed. Their reporting has crossed the line, in my opinion, and they are so angry at the President and angry at America that it has seeped into their reporting. And I really regret that. I am going to keep reading, but I really regret that they have given in to their appetitive desires and lost some of their objectivity.
And the article, in particular, that I read, I read it on the plane. I don't remember whether I was going home or coming up. But the article that I read in preparation for King Charles' visit was entitled: ``Britain rethinks its `special relationship' with America.''
``Britain rethinks its `special relationship' with America.''
And this was the question that The Economist was asking: Should Britain, the United Kingdom, which we do have a special relationship-- should the United Kingdom keep hugging America or embrace Europe?
Like it was a buffet, like they have a choice--and the article startled me. The article also points out--and this also surprised me and disappointed me--that the author of the article pointed it out, almost gleefully, that today, when you poll the American people and ask them if they approve of Britain, 76 percent of Americans approve. When you ask our friends in Britain if they approve of America, only 34 percent do. That one surprised me.
I want to set the record straight that, regardless of what the polls show, America does have a special relationship with the United Kingdom, and it is an important relationship. And that is why the American people spilled their blood and spent their treasure in 1917 to protect the British Empire. That is why the American people spent their treasure and spilled their blood in 1941 in World War II to protect the British Empire, which would not have won without America's help.
After World War II, in Great Britain, it was horrible. They were devastated, flat on their back broke. America--still, they were our friends--our special friends. America lifted them up, bankrolled their reconstruction. We went in, loaned them money, helped them to get back on their feet.
And then, shortly after World War II, we, of course, discovered that we--we meaning the United Kingdom and the United States--had a new enemy, the Soviet Union. We protected the United Kingdom all through the Cold War. I am proud of that. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
In fact, if you look at the numbers today, we still protect the United Kingdom and NATO and our friends in Europe. If you look at the money--I know there has been a lot of rhetoric that our allies in Europe are going to do better and spend more money on their own defense, but the numbers are the numbers. The American taxpayer still puts up 60 percent of total NATO defense spending today. We put up $845 billion a year to protect our cousins in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
I support NATO. I support continuing to do that. And so I agree with King
Charles. We do have a special relationship, and we should nurture it, and we should make it better.
But friends tell friends the truth. And to my friends in the United Kingdom, as we try to appreciate and reset our relationship, I would say to them gently and respectfully: The world has changed. You have to pay your own bills for a while.
This isn't the fault of the good people of the United Kingdom. This is the fault of their political leadership. It is especially true of their current political leadership. But they have castrated their military. They have. They are weak as rainwater. This doesn't happen in a week or a day or a month. This happened over a long period of time.
I remember when Great Britain ruled the seas. Now, when Iran fires a missile at their base in Cyprus, they can barely find a ship to send down there. And that ship barely made it.
On the political leadership in the United Kingdom, I have watched it hollow out its industrial base. I have watched the political leadership in the United Kingdom spend all their money on welfare.
And do you know what? It is their money. That is none of my business. If that is what they want to do in a democracy, Godspeed.
But they have depended on the American taxpayer to defend them, and the political leadership--and, again, I say this gently. I don't want to do anything to take away from the King's speech. I say this gently and respectfully: It is time for the political leadership in the United Kingdom to embrace adulthood. And it is time for them to start paying their bills and time for them to start spending money on the military.
Now, I know the Prime Minister said: We are going to do better. And he and some of our other allies in Europe are talking about spending 3.5 percent of their GDP on defense and another 1.5 percent on infrastructure in support of defense. It is a lot of talk so far.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK, published his plan for the military and military spending. I actually read it. I thought this part was special. Yes, he is going to start spending more money, but it is back-end loaded. It is not going to happen. They are not spending any serious money until 2030, and I can assure you that Sir Keir will not be around as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in September or October or January of 2030. He is struggling now. His poll numbers--I probably shouldn't say this, but it is true. He is polling right up there with gonorrhea in terms of popularity. It is just a fact.
So I do celebrate the special relationship that we have, and I do want us to be closer. But the political leadership in the United Kingdom has got to do its part. This is supposed to be a partnership.
For my final comment, the King, I think, is here through the rest of the day--the King and the Queen. And, of course, even though it was a beautiful speech that King Charles gave, the real heavy lifting is done, as we all know, in private. The King is going to meet privately with President Trump, and they are going to talk about the world, and they are going to get down to the specifics of things we can do to help each other.
I don't know what the King is going to talk to the President about. I don't know if he is carrying messages from the political leadership in the United Kingdom. That is all above my pay grade. But if the King is carrying a message from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to try to convince our President to give away the Diego Garcia military base to an African country which is the BFF of China, I hope our President will continue to resist. I hope he will respond to that request, if it is made, by saying: The short answer is no. The long answer is hell no.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom--as you know, Mr. President, the Chagos Islands are owned by the United Kingdom. They are in the Indian Ocean. On one of the islands, we built a military base with the United Kingdom called Diego Garcia. And it is a really important military base for both countries.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has decided because the United Nations has made him feel guilty about Britain's colonial past-- the United Nations has told Prime Minister Starmer that he has got to give away this military base to the African country of Mauritius, even though Mauritius has never owned Diego Garcia or the Chagos Islands. They have no connection with it, none whatsoever.
But because the Prime Minister has this White guilt because the United Kingdom and the good people of Great Britain once controlled other countries, they are supposed to feel guilty and give away our military base and their military base to Mauritius, who will promptly turn the keys over to China.
It is one of the--I think I described it one time as bone-deep, down- to-the-marrow stupid, and it is.
And eventually, the Prime Minister talked the President into it. And then President Trump came--as he always does, he thought it through. He said: No, I am not doing that.
And so they are still sawing on him and working on him. And I don't know if the King is going to bring it up, and certainly it is the King's right if he does. But I hope the President will stand firm, and let's not give away this military base to China.
Carbon Dioxide
Mr. President, I want to spend my last few minutes on another topic. This one is important to all of us, but it is also important to Louisiana. I want to talk about carbon dioxide.
We all know, we have all heard carbon dioxide--CO2--is a gas. It is colorless. It is odorless. It is everywhere. It is actually a pretty small part of our atmosphere really. I looked at the numbers. It is 0.04 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. It is a really, really small part of it, but it packs a wallop.
CO2 is composed of one atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen, and it is produced naturally. When we breathe out, for example, we breathe out carbon dioxide. It is produced naturally when organic matter decomposes. And it is very important to God's world. Plants use it for photosynthesis. It also is released when we burn fossil fuels. You have probably read that.
And even though carbon dioxide has all these extraordinarily beneficial uses, one of the downsides of it is that it is a fairly heavy gas. And it rises, even though it is dispersed throughout our atmosphere. But it does rise, and it is what is called a greenhouse gas. It acts like a blanket.
If you get enough CO2 in our atmosphere, it is like a blanket covers the Earth. And what happens when you are under a blanket? It holds in heat. And that heat can change your natural temperature and sometimes impacts your weather and your sea levels. That is why you hear some folks talk about global warming and climate change. That is what we are talking about. That is all CO2 is.
We don't have a world plan to deal with this problem. President Biden came up with a plan. It was called ``spend as much money as I possibly can.'' He spent billions of dollars fighting CO2.
I checked. Do you know how much all of the billions--and he might have spent a trillion but certainly billions of dollars of American taxpayer money that he spent--do you know how much it lowered temperatures? None. Zero. Zilch. He never had a plan. It was always just throw money at the wall and see what happens. I hope in the future we can do better.
But here is my point: One of the things that government did to try to combat CO2--or at least control CO2--is pay companies to capture it. And we are still doing that. And what do I mean by capture?
Well, when companies--let's say, take a petrochemical plant. When it burns fossil fuels, natural gas usually, it produces CO2-- carbon dioxide. And there is a way, under the technology, to capture that CO2. What do you do with it? One option is to inject it into the ground, into the Earth, deep beneath our feet.
Now, you would hope that companies--many of them became during the Biden years very woke, and they criticized anybody who asked questions about President Biden's climate change plan.
But the other reason they were so high on carbon capture is because the Federal Government was giving them bucketloads of money to capture this carbon. It is called the 45Q tax credit.
We will actually pay these companies--like a petrochemical company--to capture carbon and inject it into the ground in the interest of our environment and climate.
We pay 85 bucks. It is your money. You are paying it, not me. I pay a little bit of it when I pay my taxes, but we all pay it. We actually pay companies $85 a ton. The lobbyists and many of our friends in the business community are lobbying right now to increase the money that we pay them to $250 a ton. But just based on paying them $85 a ton, by 2030, we will be spending about $30 billion.
So while I want to believe that the companies capture the carbon in the interest of the environment, they are being paid a whole bunch of money to do it as well. I am not saying they wouldn't do it anyway out of the goodness of their heart, but the money doesn't hurt. OK?
You know what the old saying is: You don't have to be rich and famous to be happy. You just have to be rich.
So, anyway, we are paying companies a whole bunch of money to go capture this carbon and inject it in the ground. Now, I didn't come here tonight to debate whether that is a good idea or a bad idea. A lot of that is up to the States and to Congress for another day. There are pros and cons, and some say it is a good idea. Some say it is a bad idea.
I know certain oil and gas companies have been injecting CO2 into producing oil and gas wells for years to make the gas and oil flow better without hurting anybody. I know in other cases there have been CO2 pipelines--carbon dioxide pipelines-- transmitting carbon dioxide that have ruptured and injured people. I don't know who is right, and I don't know who is wrong.
I do know, though, that to inject it underground, you have got to do it on somebody's property. And that is where the rub comes in. We take our property rights in Louisiana seriously. Your right to own property is a Federal constitutional right. In Louisiana, it is also a State constitutional right. So important, we put it in our State constitution. Article I, section 4 of our State constitution says:
Every person has the right to acquire, own, control, use,
enjoy, protect, and dispose of private property.
Now, our constitution also goes on to say, because we are a practical people in Louisiana:
This right to own property is subject to reasonable
statutory restrictions and the reasonable exercise of the
police power.
What does that mean? Well, as we all know, that means, if I own a piece of property and they want to put a highway through and I don't want them to put a highway through my property, but it would cost the taxpayers of my State three times the amount to move the highway over here as opposed to putting it through my property--under the law, we call it expropriation. I think some States call it eminent domain.
In my State, in every other State, and under the Federal Government, the State can come in and say: Look, Kennedy, we know you don't want to give up your property, but it is going to cost us a lot more to put the road over here. So we are going to take your property, but we are going to pay you full price.
And they do. They have to. It is in our constitution. They have to pay the full, fair market price. So we are pretty comfortable with that.
But the people in Louisiana have just discovered that the companies that I talked about who are being paid this Federal money--$85 a ton to capture carbon and inject it into the ground--can also take people's land to put in an injection well. And I don't like that.
I am not taking sides in terms of carbon capture. I am not. But we have got a lot of people in my State that are very suspect about the wisdom of this carbon capture. I am not saying they are right or wrong. But they have learned the hard way that if you trust government, you failed history class.
And if someone in my State who owns a piece of property--it is usually in my rural areas--who owns 50 acres that was handed down from their dad and mom and their dad and mom and their dad and mom, if a company wants to come in and pay them to put in an injection well and put carbon dioxide underneath their land and those land owners are OK with that, I am OK with it.
But I am going to have something to say if a lot of these companies start coming in and taking people's property and putting in an injection well. That is a big difference between putting in a road.
This is a new technology. We are still learning about it. And right now, under Louisiana law--this was passed by the Louisiana Legislature. The statute is title 30, section 1108, Louisiana revised statute 30:1108. This is what it says:
Any storage operator--
That is the guy or gal who wants to put carbon dioxide under the ground--
Any storage operator is hereby authorized, after obtaining
any permit and any certificate of public convenience and
necessity from the commissioner--
That means they get the permission of the State.
. . . [can] exercise the power of eminent domain and
expropriate [take] needed property.
So if one of these companies comes to one of my people on their family land and says, ``We will offer you this. We want to put in an injection well,'' and the owners of that land go, ``I don't think so. This property has been in my family for years, and I don't know about this CO2 stuff anyway,'' they are not going to have a choice because the State can come in and take that land.
I don't like that, and I think our legislature needs to weigh in on this. I think we ought to go back to what our State constitution says and what the Federal Constitution has said even longer: People have the right to property. People have the right to property.
That concludes my remarks. I can show myself out.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
