Cotton: ‘At a Minimum,’ GOP Majority Can Use Budget Power to Force Biden to Change Energy Policies

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) stated that if Republicans take back the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, they can use the power of the purse to force the Biden administration to reverse some of its policies and expand American energy production in the same way Congressional Republicans used the budget process in 2015 to force the Obama administration to lift the ban on oil exports.

Host Laura Ingraham asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:00] “So, let’s say you guys do manage to get that seat and you take the majority, maybe you take a couple of seats, you take the majority in the Senate, what can Republicans do to stop this madness, if anything, once you reclaim the majority?”

Cotton responded, “Well, at a minimum, we can use our spending power, which we’ve got to pass every year to force the Biden administration to take certain actions, whether it’s permitting new pipelines or other oil and gas developments, issuing new permits, and having new lease sales. We did this in the late Obama era, once we won back the Senate and the House. In 2015, for instance, we lifted the 40-year-old ban on oil exports, going back to the Jimmy Carter era, speaking of Democratic presidents who intentionally tried to hobble American energy.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett