{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=0D69D004-B580-45FE-8AF3-016AD6792B61", "Build Back Beijing: Democrats\u2019 Anti-Energy Bill Would Hurt Families and Help China", "2021-11-16", "2021", "2021-11", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats\u2019 reckless tax and spending spree:\n\n\u201cTwo weeks ago, President Biden and his team flew to Glasgow for a glitzy conference. World leaders traveled there to attend one another\u2019s speeches on carbon emissions and the climate.\n\n\u201cThe world\u2019s largest emitter was absent. China pumps out more than a quarter of the entire world\u2019s emissions but President Xi didn\u2019t bother to attend this conference.\n\n\u201cPutin didn\u2019t show up either. He and his cronies in Moscow are too busy using Russia\u2019s natural gas stranglehold to make energy hostages out of our European friends who rushed too naively towards renewables.\n\n\u201cThis goes to the core problems with the anti-energy agenda that liberal elites want to thrust on our country. Maximum self-inflicted pain for American families\u2026 in exchange for no meaningful global gains.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019d have America tie one hand behind our back while our competitors and adversaries keep right on going.\n\n\u201cHurts families\u2026 helps China.\n\n\u201cAcross the country, working families are already worrying about the big, potentially historic spikes in energy costs and heating bills that are heading their way.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s a New York Times headline from last week: \u2018Winter Heating Bills Loom as the Next Inflation Threat.\u2019\n\n\u201cFutures contracts for home heating fuels have skyrocketed in price. Natural gas futures have just about doubled from last year. For heating oil and propane, it\u2019s even worse.\n\n\u201cOur colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee are holding a hearing this very morning on rising heating costs.\n\n\u201cIn Kentucky, about 4 in 10 households are heated by natural gas. Families are about to get slammed.\n\n\u201cEven more Kentucky families rely on straight electricity for their heat. And in our state, more than two-thirds of our electrical power comes from coal. Coal literally keeps the lights on and the cold out.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s why the original Obama-Biden war on coal hit states like Kentucky so hard. And it\u2019s why the even more radical sequel that Democrats are planning next would fall on the heartland like a ton of bricks.\n\n\u201cThe President\u2019s special envoy for climate issues, John Kerry, says, \u2018[Y]ou have to phase down coal before you can end coal.\u2019 One of the President\u2019s nominees to the Treasury Department has admitted that small producers of affordable American energy, \u2018are going to probably go bankrupt in short order.\u2019\n\n\u201cAmerican families are staring down the barrel of skyrocketing heating bills, and the Democrats\u2019 response is to go to war against affordable American energy.\n\n\u201cThe reckless taxing and spending spree they\u2019re writing behind closed doors and want to pass in a matter of weeks would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on Green New Deal-type policies that would saddle families with even higher prices and make our nation even more dependent on Russia and the Middle East.\n\n***\n\n\u201cOf course, energy inflation is just one part of the huge inflation crisis that Democrats have unleashed.\n\n\u201cAccording to reports on one new survey, ninety percent of Americans are either somewhat concerned or very concerned about inflation and rising costs. Nine in 10 households are hurting.\n\n\u201c67% of the country, two thirds, say Washington needs to stop printing and spending so much and driving prices even higher.\n\n\u201cEnergy bills and gas prices are just one corner of this inflation crisis. But Democrats want to ignore the people, plow ahead, and spend trillions more.\n\n\u201cEven liberal economists who like the Democrats\u2019 reckless taxing and spending spree because they agree with the far-left transformation admit that it would make inflation even worse next year.\n\n\u201cThere is no part of our economy that can afford another massive dose of socialism.\n\n***\n\n\u201cBut Democrats are specifically targeting American energy to get hit especially hard.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re planning direct new taxes, new fees, and new regulatory mandates for energy producers.\n\n\u201cThey want to make affordable, reliable energy artificially expensive to force Americans toward the less affordable, less reliable forms of energy that elite liberals would rather they use.\n\n\u201cIt would hurt families badly\u2026 and it would help China in a big way.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s because the Biden Administration doesn\u2019t have any strategic plan to snap its fingers and turn our massive country into some green utopia overnight.\n\n\u201cThey just want to throw boatloads of government money at things like solar panels and electric vehicles and hope it all works out.\n\n\u201cBut China absolutely dominates these supply chains. For lithium batteries. For solar panels. For practically all these fashionable purchases into which Democrats want to dump all this money.\n\n\u201cIn all likelihood, Democrats\u2019 supposedly \u2018green\u2019 agenda would just provide a massive one-way gift to our adversary, the world\u2019s number-one emitter, the Chinese Communist Party.\n\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t \u2018Build Back Better.\u2019 It\u2019s \u2018Build Back Beijing!\u2019\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s just one example.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a raw material called polysilicon that is crucial for solar panels. According to the New York Times, more than 80 percent of the entire world\u2019s supply comes from China. About half of the world\u2019s supply comes just from the Xinjiang province, where China is brutalizing the Uyghur minority with tactics that include forced labor.\n\n\u201cThere are other key resources including critical minerals where China has similar strangleholds.\n\n\u201cHere are some recent headlines:\n\n\u201c\u2018Lithium Shortage May Stall Electric Car Revolution and Embed China\u2019s Lead.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018China\u2019s lithium companies are in an investment frenzy.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd just like liberal policies are hostile to the American energy we produce here at home, they are also hostile to exploring for these critical minerals here at home.\n\n\u201cTheir massive proposal is packed with anti-hard-rock-mining provisions that would make it even harder to stand up American supply chains for critical minerals.\n\n\u201cSo here\u2019s the bottom line, Mr. President. American families don\u2019t want Washington politicians waging a holy war on fossil fuels in the first place. They can\u2019t afford that nonsense.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s even more absurd that Democrats\u2019 top-down schemes would just increase China\u2019s wealth and dominance along the way.\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t have some smart master plan to invest in America\u2019s future. They\u2019ve got a plan to Build Back Beijing. Raise American families\u2019 gas prices and heating bills even higher so that we could massively stimulate Chinese export markets.\n\n\u201cHurt families; help China. Every piece of their reckless policies fit this mold.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:30:49Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=0D69D004-B580-45FE-8AF3-016AD6792B61"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8854209445416927, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}