As myriad Republicans have denounced President Joe Biden restricting U.S. oil production, while the U.S. is ordering 600,000 barrels a day from Russia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is getting behind an effort to ban importing Russian oil.
"I'm all for that, ban it — ban the oil coming from Russia, yeah," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference Thursday.
Republicans have called out Biden's energy policy, particularly on U.S. oil imports and buying Russian oil amid Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, as effectively "funding Putin's war machine."
Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters this week that "40% going into Europe, almost 10% into the United States of America, we are importing Russian energy. This needs to stop. We are funding Putin's war machine."
While the ban on Russian oil has not been put in place, Biden says "nothing is off the table" as Putin's invasion of Ukraine extends into a second week.
The Biden administration has struggled with inflation, especially the price of gasoline, which has shot up over $5 per gallon in some parts of the country.
"We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy," White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday on Air Force One. "That would raise prices at the gas pump for Americans and pad Putin's profits."
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., are talking about moving legislation on blocking Russian oil imports.
"We've talked about energy and coming from a state that's rich in energy, we can help an awful lot if they ask us to," Manchin wrote in a statement. "I've said today, I think that we should ban the amount of product we're buying from Russia to set a good example; we're buying about 600,000 barrels a day. We haven't ceased that.
"Do you think that would send a good signal, if we could just show that we had the resolve, that we were going to stop purchasing and asking the rest of the free world to stop purchasing Russian products. Because these products flow in all different directions to different places."
Despite Biden's inaction, major U.S. gas companies BP, Shell, and Exxon have preemptively cut their oil operations in Russia.
"President Biden needs to stop financing Putin's war with Russian oil because he shut off the spigots of American energy," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said this week, The Hill reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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