Barrasso on Biden: “Poor Poll Numbers are Not a National Crisis” for Strategic Oil Reserve Use
Written by Andrew-Rossi on October 20, 2022
Senator Barrasso chastizes President Joe Biden and Democrat leadership in Congress for letting inflation reach record highs and tapping into the nation’s strategic reserve as a short-term solution.
Since the beginning, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso has been a determined and unabashed critic of the Biden Administration’s energy policies. In a K.O.D.I. interview, the senator said President Biden’s decision to release more oil from the nation’s strategic reserve was “absolutely wrong” and possibly motivated by another factor.
“The strategic oil reserve is put there for emergencies. For crisis situations,” Senator Barrasso said. “The president’s poor poll numbers (are) not the crisis situation.”
From his perspective, rising inflation and gas prices are the result of the “democrat-run economy” that is dragging the American people “further and further behind.”
“We are now at a forty-year low in the amount because the president has, over the last six months, spent our national energy oil stockpile. And it’s because he has attacked American energy. It’s a lot harder to produce oil and gas in Wyoming than it was the day he came in – when President Biden drew a target on the back of American energy and pulled the trigger. (He) killed the Keystone XL pipeline. Blocked oil and gas leases. Blocked the infrastructure that we need to move that energy. That’s a direct attack . . . on every American family.”
Senator Barrasso observed that inflation has reached a forty-year high as the strategic reserve hits a forty-year low. This already directly impacts Wyoming residents and all citizens.
“I talked to a lady at the grocery store. She said she can’t afford to fill her tank with gas and fill her car with groceries in the same week,” Senator Barrasso said.
With the 2022 midterm election less than a month away, Senator Barrasso is adamant that Republicans win back the U.S. House and Senate. In a Republican-run Senate, he would be the chairman of the Energy Committee. That leadership is needed to revive American energy and deflate inflation.
“When you see the president’s best approach to an (inflation crisis) . . . is to use our emergency reserves of oil – that shows he’s not thinking straight. We ought to be using what we have in the ground, and the environmental extremists that are running that party aren’t letting us get it.”
While Senator Barrasso has tremendous grievances with the Biden Administration, he did applaud the president for signing a new bill supporting the families of fallen veterans into law.
The Supporting Families of the Fallen Act was introduced by Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville in Sept. 2021. According to Senator Tuberville’s website, the bill “increases the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI) and Veterans’ Group Life Insurance (VGLI) coverage amount from $400,000 to $500,000.”
Senator Barrasso and Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis cosponsored the bill. President Biden signed it into law on Oct. 17, 2022.
“It took the president a year to get it done,” Senator Barrasso notes, “but he finally signed it. And it was the right thing to do.”
You can listen to Senator Barrasso’s full interview on KODI here:
