Official Congressional Record
Mr. President, today, I urge my colleagues to vote for Alaska’s Right to Produce Act 2.0, which would provide greater certainty for responsible resource development on the North Slope of Alaska. It would benefit Alaskans, and it would benefit our great working Alaskans, but it would benefit America. As a little bit of background here--and you have heard me talk about this--for years, Alaska, as a resource development powerhouse for America, has been recognized by Congress to be so important for our country because of our extraordinary abundance of natural resources that we have legislated many times about our State’s getting resources to market for Alaskans, for Americans. And it is strongly in our national interest and certainly good for my State and the people I am honored to represent, particularly hard-working union members and others, who develop these resources not just for Alaska but for America. However, time and time again, when my Democratic colleagues get control of the Senate, of the House, of the White House, they have a core principle. One of their core principles is to come up to the great State of Alaska and try to shut it down. They kill thousands of jobs and try to turn this great State--my State--into a national park, with no ability to develop our economy and resources. This is just the latest example of what I call the Last Frontier lockup. During the Biden 4 years and the Senator Schumer 4 years, when he was the majority leader, the far-left Democrats--heck, all of the Democrats--came after Alaska in a huge way: the Last Frontier lockup. In every part of the State--southeast Alaska, the North Slope of Alaska--everywhere--on resource development, they came after us. How did they do that? What was the Last Frontier lockup? It is pretty hard to imagine. It was 70 Executive orders and Executive actions--70--exclusively and singularly focused on crushing Alaska--seven, zero. As a matter of fact, on day one of the Biden administration, they issued 12. They were ready to go. The Senate Democrats got power, and the Democrats got power in the executive branch, and they were, like: Let’s go. Let’s do what we always do. Let’s crush Alaska. Let’s kill thousands of jobs in Alaska. When this was at, like, 50, I actually met with President Biden and his team. I said: Mr. President, what are you doing? What are you doing? You are sanctioning my State more than you sanction Iran’s and Venezuela’s oil and gas sectors. We are Americans, and they are terrorists, and you are putting thousands of hard-working Alaskans out of jobs. Why are you doing this, sir? Three years ago, I did that with President Biden. Don’t even get me going on his answer, but he was clueless. As we all know, he was clueless on a lot of stuff, but he was clueless on that--70. The White House--the executive branch--I don’t think, in the history of America, has ever used its power to so forcefully single out one State to try to damage it and crush it. That is what we went through with the senior Senator from New York as the majority leader, who was all in on it, by the way. We are going to see one of the top guys who is always against Alaska here in a minute, because I know he is going to object to my bill. So it is pretty crazy that they would do that. Imagine any other State-- New Mexico--if the Federal Government said: Well, we are just going to go crush New Mexico. But they did it to Alaska. And it wasn’t just the 70 Executive orders. There is LNG. Remember John Kerry, the climate czar guy and former Senator? He went over to Asia--Korea, Japan--and told them: Don’t buy Alaskan LNG. Don’t buy American LNG. I mean, this is almost treasonous, but that is what they did. For 4 years, with Schumer and Biden, that is what my State got. But we have taken action. When Republicans gained control of the Senate and gained control of the House and gained control of the White House, we said: We are going to put Alaska back on top. So what did we do? We attacked the Democrats’ attacks on my State, which, again, hurt workers and hurt Alaska but hurt America in a couple of different ways. First, last year, in the Working Families Tax Cut Act, we got mandatory lease sales for the next 10 years for NPR-A, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska; for ANWR; for Cook Inlet. These are all Federal oil and gas basins. We said--Congress said--hey, regardless of who is President in the coming 10 years, they have to do lease sales in Alaska. It is good for the country. It is good for Alaska. It is good for our workers. It is good for our families. It is good in terms of reducing energy costs, for goodness sakes. So we got that in the bill. That is in the law. If you have a President like Biden, who is anti-Alaska, and they come into office 2 years from now, they are not going to be able to lock it up like Joe Biden did. Secondly, we passed Congressional Review Act resolutions. I led the effort on some of them. The Biden NPR-A rule locked down this entire area, the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, set aside by Congress-- for what?--for oil and gas development. That is why it is the National Petroleum Reserve. We ripped that Biden rule out by the roots with a CRA here in the Senate, and we did the same with the Biden lockup of ANWR, and those got passed into law. So it is a two-pronged strategy to prevent, unfortunately, my colleagues, which they always do--my Democrat colleagues in the Senate, in the House, and in the White House, if they gain power, which they will eventually--from coming back and trying to shut my State down, which they always do. Today, the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act 2.0 is the third prong of this strategy. First, we got mandatory lease sales from the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Then we got these Congressional Review Act resolutions passed and signed into law to prevent more lockups of Alaska. This is the third prong. Now, this bill has some history. In 2024, the House passed the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act 1.0. The bill was sponsored by my good friend from Minnesota in the House, Representative Stauber, who has done so much to help my State. Five Democrat House Members voted for it, despite the original cosponsor of that bill--who represented Alaska at the time--changing her mind and urging her Democratic colleagues to vote against her own bill to help Alaska. Wow, you can’t make that up. But this is nothing new, as I have said, for Democrats in DC. A lot of Democrats in Alaska don’t agree with shutting down Alaska, but it is here in the Senate where they have written over 16 letters to administration officials--Democrats and Republicans--opposing ANWR development and NPR-A development. They wrote six separate letters to insurers and financial institutions--believe it or not--using the power of the Senate to write the CEOs of banks and insurance companies: Don’t invest in Alaska. It is an abusive use of power. My colleague from New Mexico usually leads those efforts, by the way. They have tried to shut down our State not just legislatively but by pressuring the private sector to not invest in Alaska. Still, five House Democratic colleagues understood how important Alaska was, and they voted for the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act and bucked the pressure from far-left Democrats in the House, including from the original cosponsor of the bill. To them, I say thank you. Alaska says thank you. Our workers say thank you, and the country applauds your bravery. So what does this bill do? It is simple. For the coastal plain of ANWR, it protects oil and gas development in the nonwilderness portion of the coastal plain from being shut down or being reversed by a future administration. In the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, it similarly protects oil and gas development in NPR-A from a shutdown by a future administration. The bill is designed to give companies greater certainty in terms of the leases that they already have in these areas in that they can’t be canceled. The bottom line is that this is the third prong of our ability to get Alaska to be developed again, and it does something pretty simple: It protects Alaska’s existing oil and gas development opportunities from being shut down by a future administration. Now, it is a little ironic and maybe fitting that the Senator from New Mexico is going to object to my bill. I am pretty sure he is not here to support it. He has been a leader in shutting down Alaska. He has led these efforts. He has led these letters. Can you imagine if every U.S. Senator said, ``I am going to go after New Mexico. I am going to go after their workers. I am going to go try and hurt the Native people of their State. I am going to write all of the insurance companies and the banks and say, `Don’t invest in New Mexico’ ‘‘? Can you imagine what a disaster this place would be? I wouldn’t do that, but he does it. He does it all the time. And there is a little irony here. When the Biden administration and Senator Schumer were locking up my State for 4 years, it was ``drill, baby, drill’’ in New Mexico. They were shutting down my State, led by the Senator from New Mexico, and New Mexico, on Federal lands, went from 1 million barrels of oil a day to 2 million barrels a day. If that is not hypocrisy, I don’t know what is. But that is what we are up against. By the way, if the Senate changes hands and the Senator from New Mexico is going to be chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--holy cow--my State will be crushed because that is what he does. So I am pretty sure he is going to object to this. But, you know, I get a little hot about this issue because I think it is unfair. And I think, when people treat their State way differently than my State--imagine what they were doing: Hey, Joe Biden, shut down Alaska, but, by the way, make sure you approve all of these Federal leases in New Mexico so we can ``drill, baby, drill.’’ That is exactly what the Senator from New Mexico did. But here is why I get really hot about this. It goes beyond resource development. It goes beyond jobs. It goes to this chart. I have brought this chart out many times. This is a chart that depicts the life expectancy in America from 1980 to 2014 and the parts of America where people live longer. Now, you will see here that it is a little complicated of a chart. The blue and the purple are where people are living longer. In the green here, that is 13 years over a 25-year period. Red is where we have actually lost life expectancy really, really bad. But look at this map from 1980 to 2014. Unfortunately, we had a couple of places in America where people weren’t living very long or were losing life expectancy. That was kind of the opioid epidemic and other things. But the place where people lived longer for that 25-year period in more than any other State was in Alaska--Alaska. Right here in the North Slope, in the Aleutian Islands chain, in the southeast, and in the Northwest Arctic Borough, people were living 13 years longer. I have asked my colleagues many times to give me a policy indicator more important of success than that of the people you are representing living longer. I don’t think there is one. So there is huge success up here in my State. Now, why did that happen? Why are the people of Alaska living longer? Well, in part, a sad story is that a lot of Native Alaskans, primarily the Inupiat people--great people, by the way, incredible patriots--have a very low life expectancy, some of the lowest life expectancy in the country by far. But when we started developing our resources--oil and gas on the North Slope--people got jobs; people got hospitals; people got flush toilets; people got health clinics and hospitals--things that the rest of the country assumes that you have but we didn’t have here. So this issue, for me, is about the life and death of my constituents. So when I have colleagues come and they block all this stuff, and yet they do it for their own State, which is really problematic, it riles me up because I am talking about life and death of my constituents. By the way, the greater Inupiat people here, during the Biden administration, the head of the Tribe, the head of the Alaska Native Corporation, the head of the borough--all the leaders, all Native Alaskans--came down to Washington, DC, eight times to try to meet with the Secretary of the Interior to say: Don’t lock up our land. You will hurt us. Do you know how many times she met with them? Zero. Zero. And then they locked up their land anyway, canceling Native voices. So I am really hopeful, because of life expectancy, because of jobs, because of lowering healthcare costs, because of lowering costs of energy, because of our national security, that my colleagues will do the right thing and pass my legislation, the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act 2.0, right now. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 678, S. 5438; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
