Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) has accused Democrat President Joe Biden of “financing” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by continuing to buy Russian oil.
Jackson, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said: “Well, they’ve done a lot of things wrong.
“They should have put the sanctions in place right off the bat before this happened.
“Whenever the Russian troops were massed on the Ukrainian border, we should have had all of these tough sanctions.
“We should have started by sanctioning their oil and gas.
“Number one, we should have sanctioned Putin, sanctioned their central bank.
“All of the big heavy sanctions, some of them which haven’t even been done like oil and gas right now.
“Those should have been done immediately, and the agreement should have been you pull your troops off of the Ukrainian border and stop threatening the Ukrainian people, and we will release the sanctions.
“But that hasn’t been done,” the congressman said.
“We are currently still buying.
“We, the United States, are buying 600,000 barrels a day of Russian oil at over $100 a barrel now and globally, they’re getting over a billion dollars a day in oil revenue, selling their oil.
“It’s unbelievable that we’re allowing this to happen.
“We are actually financing their efforts to kill Ukrainians. It’s shameful.”
Why didn’t Biden freeze Russia’s energy sector? Why is he not blocking Putin’s primary source of income?
Dems would rather fund Putin’s TYRANNY than admit their insane climate policy is a DANGER to national security! We need American energy INDEPENDENCE, not Russian dependence! pic.twitter.com/T3zAEGCMDB
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) March 3, 2022
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put pressure on the White House by agreeing with her Republican colleagues saying she supports banning all Russian oil to the United States.
“I’m all for that. Ban it,” Pelosi said Thursday.
“The United States of America, we are importing Russian energy,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, said. “This needs to stop. We are funding Putin’s war machine.”
According to Fox News:
“The most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that in December, the U.S. imported 405,000 barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia or almost 5% of all U.S. imports for the month.
“That’s down from about 800,000 barrels in August.”
The White House said they would not be banning Russian oil despite growing calls to do so from both sides of the aisle. Biden will have a hard time not caving to the pressure.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said:
“Our objective and the president’s objective has been to maximize impact on President Putin and Russia while minimizing impact to us and our allies and partners.
“We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy and that would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people around the world because it would reduce the supply available.
“And it’s as simple as less supply raises prices, and that is certainly a big factor for the president at this moment.
“It also has the potential to pad the pockets of President Putin, which is exactly what we are not trying to do,” she said.
