Fox News Sunday

Interview

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Hey, Shannon. Good to be with you.

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I sure hope so and I've been discussing it with all of his -- you know, basically, administration.

And I'm very, very disappointed in how they have interpreted a piece of legislation. That is not how it was written. It was the intent. It was not the agreement that President Biden and I had.

So, I'm hoping he intervenes and basically says, listen, we're -- we need energy security. We have to produce. Fossil energy, cleaner and better than ever before, but we need an amount of it that we can energy independent and secured as a nation. We can also invest in the technologies that will have energy for the future. We did both.

And they're trying to now implement a bill, Shannon, that we didn't like and it's a bill they didn't pass.

So, just do our job, follow the law. Do your job.

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Yeah.

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Well, the protocol would have been to implement the bill exactly. We laid out the bill and wrote the bill in a way that told you that was sourcing and processing and what was manufacturing. The whole purpose was, is to bring basically reliable supply chains to America, be able to manufacture the batteries and cars here to get the tax credits.

That's what it's about -- energy security, bringing down the cost of health care, pharmaceuticals. And we've done that.

But if they don't implement it in a way that was written and implement it the way they desire, they just want to throw caution to the wind and put more money out and throw money from the Treasury in credits that are basically not going to accelerate how quickly that we can be totally self- reliant in America.

There's nothing wrong with us bringing manufacturing. We should not be dependent and relying on China's supply chain. You know, I said I'm old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 to buy gasoline to go to work. I don't want to stand in line to buy a battery to run a vehicle and waiting on it from China. That's what we're doing. And that's what the intent of the bill was.

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Well, that's ridiculous. I mean from the standpoint, we write pieces of legislation. We expect the administration to adhere to the intent and how we wrote it. It's in the bill. Read the law. So, anybody who has that opinion has not read the bill. What we have to do now, we have a process, so we can hold their feet accountable.

I can tell you, we brought down inflation. We can do an awful lot more. We've got more drilling going on. We're producing more oil and gas than we did before. And we're more reliant on ourselves than we were on foreign supply chains. We can do all of this.

This bill was written for one purpose, energy security, bringing down the cost of drugs, be able to have -- pay down debt, which we hadn't done in 20 years. But now when they want to blow the cap off of it, I'm going to fight and fight back hard. And I would hope that my Democrat and Republican people, friends, in legislature especially, would feel the same way and work with us to hold the administration's feet to the fire.

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It was not throwing caution to the wind.

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We have runaway inflation right now. We still have high inflation. We have a debt ceiling that's going to be crashing upon us and we're not doing anything to address that. Not even talking about it.

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Shannon, the bottom line is, when you have a chance to do something and make it better, when you have basically an administration was going away from the dependable, reliable fossil fuels that we have to have to run the country for energy security, when we're relying - we were saying, maybe we can take the sanctions off of Iran. Come on, you're going to take the sanctions off of a country that promotes the most horrific terrorist support around the world and give them more revenue to do harm to humankind? And we know that we have to have our own reliable resources. And we can do it right here in America. And we weren't doing it. You're going to sit back and say, well, I'm afraid politically it might not be popular. I've got to do what I think that is the best thing I can for my country.

And I think that we did a piece of legislation that will do exactly what it was intended to do. We've got to make sure the administration now administers the way it's supposed to.

The bottom line is, we have brought down - we have put more product into the market. We have just done more leasing and permitting that we've done. We need a permitting bill that changes how fast we're able to get it this done, and we have Democrats and Republicans agreeing that it needs to be done, we've just got to put a piece of legislation that works. We've got to work together as the United States and not allowing the political diversity of this country keep pushing us further and further to the extremes. That's what's happening.

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That's right.

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Here's the thing, only in America do we start the next election the day after the last election.

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And I've not done that. I said I -- it's underway but not -- I'm going to do my job. I want to get this - this credit - this debt ceiling. I want to get this behind us, pay our debts, start trying to get our expenses down. We can do this. We can reel in - them in, the expenses that we have, and the debt that we're accumulating.

For 21 year, Shannon, we have spent more money in America than we've taken in. You can't run your household that way. No business can survive that way. But yet here we are.

We're not doing our budget process the way we're supposed to, to get it done on time. That saves billions of dollars. I've got a lot of work to do. And every other senator and congressperson does. Everybody's worried about the election.

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Well, you know, everybody's worried about who's running for what and who's going to be this. My main concern, can we start a dialogue? Do people -- are - I'm - people are wore out, Shannon. They're tired. All we have is this bickering and fighting. They says, can't we come together?

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So, if we can start a dialogue where (ph) the middle, can't we basically bring the extremes back to where they're supposed to be in a sensible, reasonable middle.

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Sure. It's just a very, very sad day for America. Very sad day. Especially when people are maybe believing that this -- the rule of law or justice is not working the way it's supposed to and it's biased. We can't have that.

You know, Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided cannot stand. And we cannot divide our country. But, on the other hand, no one's above the law, but no one should be targeted by the law. So, let's wait and see what comes out next week.

I pray that what they come out - and whatever comes out, that they have done a thorough examination and done a thorough job as far as showing that the rule of law does work for all of us. And we'll just have to wait and see on that. But it's a very sad day.

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Thanks, Shannon. Good to be with you.

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