Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has put Joe Biden on notice over the nation’s rising inflation, telling the president to restore the Keystone XL pipeline to help get energy prices across the country to fall.
“I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built which would have provided our country with up to 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies,” the Democrat senator said.
“To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard-working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country’s future,” he added.
“The cost they see every day,” Sen. Manchin said earlier.
“And every day they go to fill up is a dollar and a quarter more a gallon.
“Three twenty-nine, $3.39.”
He continued:
“A gallon of milk is now $4 in many places. It’s taking a toll.
And I hear it when I go to the grocery store or if I go to the gas station.
“They say, Are you as mad as I am?’ and I say, Absolutely.”
Manchin said of Biden’s decision to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices:
“Today’s release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important policy Band-Aid for rising gas prices but does not solve for the self-inflicted wound that shortsighted energy policy is having on our nation.
“With an energy transition underway across the country, it is critical that Washington does not jeopardize America’s energy security in the near term and leave consumers vulnerable to rising prices.
“Historic inflation taxes and the lack of a comprehensive all-of-the-above energy policy pose a clear and present threat to American’s economic and energy security that can no longer be ignored.”
Biden said at an international climate summit earlier this month”
“This is the decade that will determine the answer. This decade.
“The science is clear: We only have a brief window left before us to raise our ambitions and to meet the task that’s rapidly narrowing.”
Chairman @Sen_JoeManchin's statement on President Biden's decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices.
Read more here: https://t.co/Mls9ilTvxU pic.twitter.com/M6apYn0mOc
— SenateEnergyDems (@EnergyDems) November 23, 2021
Happy first day of buck firearm season to all of those who are heading into the woods this morning! Wishing everyone a safe & successful hunt. pic.twitter.com/X8vRqCBm6V
— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) November 22, 2021