Former Senator Mitt Romney and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi anchor a C-SPAN discussion on the Department of Homeland Security's partial shutdown, where Republicans consider budget reconciliation to fund immigration enforcement. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright addresses U.S. maritime blockades in the Strait of Hormuz, aiming to quadruple nuclear capacity by 2050 via small modular reactors funded by private capital and DOE financing. While short-term gas price spikes are inevitable, strategic reserves may mitigate costs as Iran conflict disrupts supply. Additionally, Wright reports a 25% rise in Venezuelan oil production with five American companies operating there, focusing on economic stabilization and prisoner releases while awaiting a democratic transition estimated at nine to ten months. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Higher Prices for Nuclear Reactors00:14:50
Getting better all the time.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
All right, guys.
Today, former U.S. Senator Mitt Romney speaks about the state of democracy and governance in the United States as part of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.
From Harvard University's Institute of Politics, watch it live at 6 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and C-SPAN.org.
And then at 7.30 p.m. Eastern, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sits down for a conversation on American politics as she retires from Congress after 20 terms.
She'll chat with former CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Cesno.
From George Washington University, watch that conversation live on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
Congress is back after a two-week recess, and there's a lot on the to-do list to help track it all for us.
We're joined by CQ Roll Calls Eris Foley.
Let's start on the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
It will hit the two-month mark this week.
Is there any indication at this point that Republicans and Democrats are moving towards a resolution here?
Republicans and Democrats, right?
That's very generous phrasing.
I think that what we saw on the Senate side, Republicans and Democrats did agree to a bill on the Senate side to fund DHS mostly with ICE, without ICE and some CBP funding.
But yeah, it sits to the House side, and now the House has rejected it initially, but it's still kind of being waiting in limbo right now.
You have House Republicans who feel very concerned about the idea of not, of leaving out ICE funding, of leaving out immigration enforcement funds, and who want to ensure that a deal to fund DHS will eventually still lead to ICE and CBP getting what otherwise would have been the appropriations they would have for FY27.
So the idea of moving this through a budget reconciliation process, how would that work?
And is that on the table?
Yes.
So because the Senate bill does not include ICE and CBP funding, the idea is that they would use reconciliation because Republicans and Democrats have not been able to come to a deal on reforms for ICE and CBP.
So as a result, the Senate bill doesn't include those funds.
Republicans are trying to use reconciliation as a go-it-alone tactic to approve immigration enforcement funding as part of more of a partisan bill.
But that's a really heavy lift in this Congress.
How long does that take?
And is the White House on board with that approach?
Yes, the White House is also on board with that approach.
The problem is, I think, that Republicans are still trying to get on board with the strategy and just how do you fund DHS while ensuring that there is going to be funding for ICE and CBP.
So there have been conversations about whether they do one reconciliation package or do two reconciliation packages.
If you do two, you might be better able to narrow the scope of an ICE and CBP funding reconciliation package.
But there are a lot of people who are in the United States.
We're going to take you live now to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright speaking as the U.S. begins blocking maritime traffic at Iranian ports at the Strait of Hormuz.
This is live coverage on C-SAN.
The President has this goal of quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050.
You've seemed pretty confident that the U.S. can reach that.
There's been concerns about how long it takes nuclear to be developed.
Can nuclear really be developed fast enough to keep the U.S. competitive with China in the AI data center race?
Well, President's aggressive, as we all know, but it's usually based on substance, and I think it is here as well.
You know, before I get to that meteor question, let me say one of the things the president asked for was these test reactors.
You know, early last year, so 13, 14 months ago, he said, We want to get two of these new reactors critical, meaning they're full nuclear systems running by July 4 of this year, the nation's 250th anniversary.
There are not much happening in nuclear for a few decades.
To want to get something done in 18 months, that's aggressive.
But through the DOE, with our regulatory authorities, we are moving through.
We had 11 reactors apply to be part of this program.
And I think we will not only have two, but probably more than two of these next generation small modular reactors critical by July 4 this year.
So the technology is moving fast.
The private capital is fast.
Bigger reactors take longer time.
So it's an aggressive goal.
But I think there's a very real chance that we'll hit it.
And there's no doubt we will have a massive, massive expansion in nuclear energy production in the United States in the coming years and certainly in the coming decades.
There's been some growing pushback against the huge amount of power that these data centers demand on the local and state level.
Could that slow down the president's goal of achieving this quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050?
No, because I think it's grown the constituency that wants more power, that wants to expand the capacity of our grid.
During the Biden administration in those four years, they closed 50, 60 gigawatts of firm, not at retirement age, generating capacity.
And we saw the result of that was no growth in American electricity and much higher prices.
So people today, of course, want lower prices, which means more supply.
We also want to lead in AI.
So we've just got to bring common sense back to electricity, which is to get more out of the assets we have and build new assets as quickly as we can.
So we're uprighting nuclear reactors, we're uprighting natural gas reactors, we're uprighting hydro reactors, meaning taking existing reactors and adding to it.
But no, this desire for more electricity generation, I think, is actually a tailwind for nuclear.
You're probably implying funding for them.
And yeah, they're not going to, the original ones will not be funded through the traditional utility model.
That just hasn't worked for a while.
What are you thinking of in terms of how that will be funded?
So a lot of that will be funded by the hyperscalers.
They want to add data center capacity quickly.
They have awesome balance sheets and massive amounts of capital.
They're willing to lean in and invest in new generation.
So they're going to be equity capital for probably most of the nuclear that gets built.
And then the energy dominance financing office in the DOE.
We have actually enormous lending authority, but a small credit subsidy, which means we have to lend smartly.
We have to lend where we're going to get paid back.
But are we going to get paid back by hyperscalers and developing large-scale assets?
Yes, we are.
So the capital is there to get it going.
I'm sure you know about the ratepayer protection pledge.
So we've tried to wed two things together.
We need massively more electric generating capacity for the U.S. to lead in AI, which I think is incredibly exciting.
There's massive upsides in that.
And frankly, there's massive downsides of not leading in AI.
But through the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, we've got agreements with all of the developers of data centers that they'll put capital up front.
They'll pay for the power demand they need, and they'll pay for additional things that will strengthen the grid.
Many of the deals we've struck have two, three, four-year freezing of electricity rates in nominal terms, which means a slow decline in real terms.
And in Indiana recently, we've got a utility there applying for a rate decrease.
So I actually think data centers and this new demand, and new supply being put on the grid, those are going to be forces to push down the price of electricity, not drive it up.
Speaking of lowering prices, I want to talk a little bit about gas prices.
And I know you've talked a lot about this recently.
But the president said yesterday that high oil and gas prices could be here to stay or could even be a little higher by the midterms in November.
You've sounded more optimistic in past interviews saying you expect gas prices to ease and that there's a good chance that prices could hit under $3 a gallon by the summer.
Is that still your belief, particularly given today's blockade in the Strait, or has the dynamic changed there?
Well, by the summer is aggressive timeframe now.
You know, going into this, this is a 47-year-long conflict with Iran that's repeatedly not only been a threat to American soldiers and peace in the Middle East, but also a threat to energy supplies.
You know, the Arabian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz have been important my whole lifetime.
And so the president knew going into this that if you disrupt the flow of energy through that, in the short term, you're going to push up energy prices.
In fact, I'm very proud of a president who in his first term and his second term has done everything he can to grow supply and therefore push down the price of energy, that he was willing to say, I'm not going to kick that can down the road as other administrations have.
I'm not going to let Iran become nuclear armed with a massive weapons missile stockpile so that they can never be defanged.
We just have to live with this massive energy overhang in the Middle East that got worse.
He knew it was short-term disruptive, but he felt committed to end this threat that Iran is about to cross this threshold.
I'm proud of that, but it does mean higher energy prices in the short term.
It absolutely does.
So what does short-term mean now?
Because you just said that by the summer might be ambitious.
So what is your thinking on when Americans can expect lower prices?
And I'm talking about lower prices and the extent of where they were before this war started.
Yeah, well, in the very long term, definitely this will reset prices down.
But we're going to see energy prices, you know, high and maybe even rising until we get the ships, meaningful ship traffic through the Straits of Hormuz.
That'll probably hit the peak oil price at that time.
That's probably sometime in the next few weeks.
So you think it'll go higher before it goes lower?
It depends how the conflict goes, but it's a very real possibility.
But once the conflict ends and energy starts flowing again, you'll start to see downward pressure, but it will take some time, depending upon the longer the conflict goes, the longer the rebound is.
And you mentioned that the president was well aware of the potential for these prices to go up in the short term.
He said that as well.
Did you talk to the president and your colleagues about sort of these projections or warnings that in particular closing, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could have on American gas prices?
Oh, you bet.
You know, we've talked about the problem of Iran and how best to deal with that problem since the start of this administration.
It has been a constant ongoing dialogue.
You know, it started with negotiations and pressure.
He was very open to how do we resolve this problem because it's not going to go away on its own.
In fact, it's going to get much worse on its own.
So very, very active dialogue, the whole administration.
Are you What tools does the Trump administration have in its toolkit that you guys haven't used yet if this Iran issue continues to sort of lag on longer than maybe you originally anticipated?
What more can the administration do to sort of make gas prices go lower sooner rather than later?
Or is it entirely up to ending this war, fully reopening the Strait, and this situation coming to a conclusion?
There's a number of creative things, and a number of which we've already done, obviously releasing a coordinated release across the world from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
We changed the blending requirements for gasoline production this summer.
That meaningfully grows U.S. refineries' ability to grow the supply of gasoline.
That'll have some downward pressure.
We temporarily waived the Jones Acts to move energy around, because unfortunately we have a couple regions, California and New England stand out the most, that have sort of made themselves energy islands.
So they're most at risk.
But those are the hardest to fix, in your view?
Yeah, they're the hardest to fix.
And look, the president in his first term and this whole term, I was just in California, we have pleaded with California to say, you're needlessly imposing very expensive energy on the residents of California.
And people tell me, well, it's a blue state.
Well, we don't care if it's a red state or a blue state.
You know, we're here for all 342 million Americans.
So everything we can do to lower energy prices with or without the Iran conflict and across the country.
But in this short-term conflict, the temporary waiver of the Jones Act, very helpful to make sure that, because America produces more oil than we consume, more natural gas than we consume, and more refined products, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
So America is just by far the biggest energy player in the world.
We want to continue to grow that production, keep energy prices down in our country, and of course help our allies abroad.
I also want to talk about Venezuela a little bit because I've been bugging DOE on this for months, particularly before the Iran war began.
I'm curious if you can give us an update on how many barrels of Venezuela oil have been sold since January.
And I'm not talking about marketed, fully sold.
Fully sold.
All right, so when the January 3rd actions took place, Venezuelan oil production was a little less than a million barrels a day.
Call it, you know, 950,000 barrels a day.
Today, it's over 1.2 million barrels a day.
So we've had about 25% growth in oil production in Venezuela in just over three months.
And essentially, all of those barrels come to the marketplace.
So if you say 95 days, a little over a million barrels, that's 90 to 100 million barrels right there.
There was a buildup of storage of about 50 million barrels of excess oil that was on these blockaded tankers and that was stored on shore that they couldn't get to market.
So in round numbers, probably 150 million barrels of Venezuelan oil have been sold.
Probably a little more than that, but something like that since January 3rd?
U.S. Investment in Venezuela's Oil00:06:24
And you've talked a lot also about getting U.S. companies to commit to investments in Venezuela.
I'm curious how that push has been going.
Are there companies that have agreed to do business in Venezuela that weren't doing that beforehand?
In fact, there's five American companies in Venezuela right now as we speak down there with our Assistant Secretary for Hydrocarbon Energy and Geothermal Energy is down there with them right now.
And they're different kinds, from offshore producers to onshore unconventional to onshore conventional producers.
But yeah, the interest is quite large.
You will see American, new American investment flowing in this year.
And you've also probably seen, in fact, I think there'll be an announcement very soon of the large American company that's been there for a long time is ramping up their production.
They're doing land swaps to be more efficient in generating production.
You can name that company if you want.
Feel free to.
I think everyone knows who it is, but I probably should be careful.
But they've been there for over 100 years.
And they are the largest producer of oil in Venezuela, and they are ramping up their production meaningfully.
And they're investing in the country for the long term to grow it quite a bit.
What's the biggest issue when you talk to U.S. companies that they have?
What's the biggest concern that they have in investing in Venezuela?
And how is the administration convincing companies to go in after all of this time?
So I should be careful now.
We're not convincing anyone.
I'm not twisting arms or bending people, but oil and gas producers are capitalists, you know, and they are by nature risk takers.
We produce oil and gas in over 100 countries around the world of all different risk profiles.
So the risk profile of Venezuela, you know, is it the same as the U.S. or Norway?
No.
But what everyone recognizes is it's meaningfully lower than the risk profile of Venezuela six months ago.
And the trajectory looks like it's going to be meaningfully lower six months from now.
So people look at trends in risk.
There's declining risk and massive reserves on the ground.
So that's a pretty fruitful environment for investment, which massively helps, of course, global oil supplies.
That heavy crude, a lot of our refineries were built specifically for that crude.
When most of the refineries were built in the United States, Venezuela was the number one exporter of oil in the world.
So there's just a natural match there.
Of course, it's in the Western Hemisphere.
It's a shorter ship route to get here.
It's a country with a history of democracy and a lot of energy professionals from Venezuela.
Most of the oil and gas companies in the United States have tons of Venezuelan employees of their companies.
So it's a comfortable place, despite 25 years of authoritarian rule that's got a lot of positives going forward.
How long do you anticipate the U.S. being as involved as it currently is in Venezuela?
Or is the goal long term to sort of wean away from Venezuela and allow them to eventually do all of this completely independent of the U.S. without oversight?
Absolutely.
That's the goal.
That's the goal.
Look, we're dealing with the government that was in power before, the remnants of a not good authoritarian regime.
Is it an issue that the person who is leading Venezuela was part of that past regime?
I would say it's the whole government.
But we've used our leverage over the finances in Venezuela and the control of the flow of Venezuela to drive improved behavior.
But you're starting from a very low base.
But the degree of corruption, the political prisoners have been released, the press has become freer, the business climate has changed dramatically.
So things are going in the right direction.
But look, Venezuela's got a long history of democracy.
I think when you see a democratic transition to a new regime in Venezuela, then you'll see the U.S. role pull back.
U.S. businesses will be involved.
The U.S. government will be alive and supportive of that country.
But I think we'll be out of the gear we're in right now.
What do you think the timeline for that is?
Because I know that was a question when all of this began back in January that a lot of people had, which was essentially when will there be sort of a democratic election in Venezuela and when will the U.S. not have to use so many of its resources to do the oversight that it's currently doing?
Yeah, well, I should, on the latter point, we're actually, I wouldn't say using a huge amount of resources.
You know, it's a small number of people.
We've established a relationship and an agreement.
And it's a win.
When I was in Venezuela, and when I'll go back, Americans are enormously popular in Venezuela right now.
You know, we're the liberators of this country.
75, 80% of Venezuelans in a poll are pro-America and pro-the transformation that's gone about.
So, but most of the activity down there is businesses, private capital, private, whatever.
So, we're not twisting any arms, we're not doing anything.
But the short answer is I don't know.
I hope it's during this administration, and I suspect it will be.
But look, if you look at the main opposition leader down there who recently won the Nobel Prize, Marina Karina Machado, she was asked, like, how quickly could an election be held?
And I think her estimate was it would, in the best case, it would take nine or 10 months from a concerted effort to we're going to build voter rolls, we're going to establish the institutions to hold an election to get there.
And right now, our central focus is not to build voter roles, it's to get people paid, to get the currency stabilized, for people to have meals on their table, to get people out of prison, to have money flowing in.
So, we want to see Venezuela.
We've got a lot of the corruption shrunk.
We want to see Venezuela moving in a very positive direction.
Positive for Venezuela, positive for the U.S., positive for the Western Hemisphere.
And that progress in that, I think, has been tremendous.
And then that next, and then the next step will be moving towards these institutions for democratic elections.
So, I hope and expect it'll be during the Trump administration.
Well, that's all the time we have.
We're going to have to have you back next year to see what the update is on Venezuela.
So, thank you so much for taking the time.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
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Today, former U.S. Senator Mitt Romney speaks about the state of democracy and governance in the United States as part of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.
From Harvard University's Institute of Politics, watch it live at 6 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and C-SPAN.org.
And then at 7.30 p.m. Eastern, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sits down for a conversation on American politics as she retires from Congress after 20 terms.
She'll chat with former CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Cesno.
From George Washington University, watch that conversation live on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
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Remarks now from New York City Mayor Zoran Mandani as he marks his 100 day in office.
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Remarks now from New York City Mayor Zoran Mandani as he marks his 100th day in office.