How Bad Energy Policy Drove Up Prices and Hurt American Families

I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you all for being here. I'm also thrilled to work for President Donald J. Trump. And I can breathe. I don't have a tie on today. I've worn a tie more in the last two or three weeks than I have in my whole life and I feel liberated right now. When I'm on TV, my mom doesn't recognize me in a tie. Someone looked like you, but it wasn't you. So who am I? Like, I'm a passionate guy about energy. From a kid in high school, I was passionate about energy sources, energy technology. I've spent, after schooling, my entire career as an entrepreneur in energy. Why? It's energizing. And also, it's what controls the limits in what's possible in our lives. Not just us, but everyone around the world. We had 30-year global life expectancy at birth throughout all of human history, all the way up to less than 200 years ago. Today, it's 73 years. From 30 to 73. Two things catalyze that change. The growth of human liberty, bottom-up social organization, what we're all passionate about, and the explosion in available energy from hydrocarbons. These two things just transformed the human condition. Not everyone in the world has access to the liberty and energy we have. But in our own country, both of those concepts have been under great threat in the last four years. Maybe that's why my political career started. Liberty under threat. Energy resources under threat. President Trump was elected partially on this very issue. And he was elected to get rid of the nonsense and bring back common sense. What do I mean by nonsense? Look at the last four years. What have we seen? Every possible new barrier implemented to make it harder to produce oil and gas. No, that doesn't change the demand for oil and gas. You just make it harder to produce. What do you get? You get less supply and higher prices. We've seen 30% rise in electricity prices just in the previous administration. During President Trump's first term, almost no change in national average electricity prices. All of a sudden, a huge rise in electricity prices, rise in gasoline, rise in energy across the board. So what was the response to that? Well, the United States is the dominant producer of natural gas. And we have a booming industry exporting natural gas to our allies around the world. Well, let's stop that. Let's ban new permitting of LNG export terminals. And then to add insult to injury, a whole bunch of regulations were rolled out to limit your ability to buy the appliances you want. You may want to buy that appliance, but the new appliance you're allowed to buy costs more and works worse. My dishwasher has to run for two hours now. And at the end, I got to clean the dishes. My clothes dryer works at half the power. In theory, this is saving energy. It just takes twice as long to dry our clothes. Like these are just nonsensical things that have hurt people's lives and driven prices up.