By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Monday, 13 June 2022 11:09 AM

President Joe Biden must return to the policies that made the United States energy-dominant, rather than pushing "to make the oil and gas industry knuckle under to the Green New Deal," Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Newsmax on Monday. 

"We were exporting oil and gas," the Tennessee Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "The day he walked into the Oval Office, he killed Keystone. He took Alaska offline. He took offshore [drilling] offline. He is slow-walking drill permits. They're not doing any more leases."

This is because Biden is "trying to crush" the industry, Blackburn said.

"They said that they were going to force this issue of the Green New Deal and this is how they're doing it," she said. "It is disrespectful of the American people. It's like one lady told me, and she voted for Biden. She said, 'Everything this administration is doing makes my life worse.' "

Blackburn said she was in five counties in her state over the weekend and heard the same concerns about the price of gasoline, which passed a national average of $5 a gallon over the weekend.

"It affects people who are having to drive 15, 30, 60 miles a day to get to and from work, and it is hitting them in the pocketbook," said Blackburn. "They're trying to get kids to and from different activities in school, and then you talk to the school directors. They run these school buses 12 months out of the year at what it is costing them to run these buses.

"Emergency management, the sheriff's departments, they're having to sit down and reconfigure budgets for their cities, their counties, their school systems, all because of the cost of gas, the cost of everything."

The Biden administration is blaming the prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine, which is "not the case," said Blackburn. 

"This is the administration choosing to do business with the Saudis, with Venezuela, instead of turning to the oil companies, turning to the independents, turning to wildcatters and saying to get those drill bits in the ground," she said.

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