President Joe Biden has pushed his "buy American" agenda, but he doesn't want to follow that policy when it comes to buying oil and gas produced in the United States because his administration is "very beholden to the environmental left," Sen. James Lankford said Thursday on Newsmax.
"They're running the White House at this point," the Oklahoma Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "Their goal is to reduce energy production in the United States, knowing full well that we have to have that energy from somewhere, but they want to be able to stand up and crow and say the United States has reduced our carbon footprint."
That comes while oil is bought from other places, including Russia, but to the environmentalists, the other countries can have a "bad environmental score" as long as a good score is achieved in the United States, and that is "irrational," said Lankford.
"If you're going to talk about clean production, no one produces oil cleaner than the United States of America, so it's nonsensical policy," the senator added.
Lankford also commented on the Labor Department's report released Thursday showing the nation's inflation rate is now at 7.9% or the largest spike seen since 1982, pointing out that the inflation growth can't be blamed on the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
"People need to remember, that's the inflation index going up before the war that happened in Ukraine," said Lankford. "This is the Biden policies. This is what he put into place last March when everyone told him not to dump $2 trillion into a growing economy, when they did that, anyway. It causes inflation. Inflation feeds inflation. It's very hard to be able to stop and the American people are going to continue to suffer from this."
It's also "spin" to blame the growing prices on gasoline and other goods on Russia or President Vladimir Putin, said Lankford. "They're hoping everyone forgets the last year and how much prices rose all last year."
He added: "All the problems that we've had in the last year are based on their policies, and most Americans don't know because we don't track the inflation in other countries. Japan has not experienced this. South Korea hasn't, Australia hasn't, the U.K., Germany, all these other countries didn't experience inflation like we have. The difference was that Biden's policies that he put in place spurred this kind of inflation."
Russia has warned that banning its oil could make prices reach $300 a barrel or more, and Lankford said if that happens, it would affect Europe most, as it depends on Russia for 38% of its energy needs.
Europe's countries are already talking about returning to former production systems, with Germany talking about reopening its coal-fired power plants and France speaking about a return to nuclear, said Lankford.
Meanwhile, it will be decades before the use of electric vehicles will be widely seen, Lankford said.
"We only have 2% of electrical vehicles on the road," he said. "They're talking about doubling that number in the next 10 years. Well, great, that's 4%. That's not going to get us there."
The senator on Thursday said he won't be endorsing any candidates to replace Sen. James Inhofe, after the 87-year-old Oklahoma Republican announced his retirement, but said he is proud of Inhofe for his service and that he's "retiring with honor."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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