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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria to discuss how the Administration’s backwards energy policies drive inflation, as well as his Fair Access to Banking Act. Excerpts and full video are below.
On High Oil Prices, Becoming a Price Maker:
“Any time energy prices are high, inflation will be high. Energy goes into everything we produce, everything we manufacture, everything we grow, everything that’s shipped, everything in the supply chain. Really, inflation is largely driven by the price of energy.”
“We should be at about 15 million barrels per day in the United States of America. We should be selling a lot more abroad, to our friends in Europe. We should be the price maker, not the price taker. The spread between WTI and Brent could be avoided by the United States, by the WTI being really the index the world watches. I know there's going to be some bringing of those two indexes together, but really, we could be producing for the world. [Other nations] should be able to rely on us – not have to rely on enemies and frenemies, if you will – for oil supply.”
On the Inflation Reduction Act:
“It’s exactly a green agenda bill. There’s nothing in there for oil. The reason oil is so high priced right now is because the Administration has made it more difficult to drill.”
On Oil and Gas Leases, Permitting:
“On this issue of applications for permits to drill on federal lands, [the Administration has] slow walked that to the point where [permit seekers] can hardly afford to go through the process. Plus, you have many steps in the federal bureaucracy. Besides the Bureau of Land Management, you end up with the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and, in some cases, the United States Department of Agriculture if it’s forestlands or grasslands.
“Even on the lease issue, [the Administration] is wrong. The state of North Dakota was just in federal court last week or the week before suing over the legally obligated leases the President has held up for many quarters now.”
Last month, Senator Cramer issued a statement backing the lawsuit Attorney General Drew Wrigley filed against the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) cancellation of quarterly oil and gas lease sales without notice or public input.
In April 2022, the Senator also delivered a floor speech on the Biden Administration’s “9,000 Lease Lie.”
On the Fair Access to Banking Act:
“My bill doesn't require anybody to bank anything. What it does is prohibits banks from categorically discriminating against legal commerce by industry groups. In other words, you can't just say, ‘We will not bank any utility that uses coal generated electricity. We will prohibit lending to a gun manufacturer or an ammunition sales retailer because of this one industry that's out of favor.’ But it's legal commerce.
“These banks aren't exactly on their own. These are FDIC-insured, these are taxpayer-backed institutions. So, they have an obligation, not to bank everything I want them to bank, but to take a risk analysis loan-by-loan, application-by-application – not just kick an entire category out because they're a disfavored group or a disfavored industry by liberals.”