Rep. August Pfluger: What ‘Drill Baby Drill’ Can Do for You

“Energy security is national security.”

If you spend enough time with Rep. August Pfluger, you might get tired of hearing him repeat those words.

The Texas congressman and new Republican Study Committee chairman would be the first to say that if you aren’t tired of hearing it, Republicans haven’t been saying it enough.

Sound energy policies to bring down prices at the pump, in the grocery store, and on Americans’ utility bills is first in the order of operations for President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress if they want to see the MAGA agenda enacted. Pfluger, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, joined me to discuss energy security and national security on this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown.”

Energy, Pfluger said, is “the foundation for our economy. It underpins our military. It allows us to have diplomatic relationships with many countries around the world that are not blessed to have resources that depend on other countries. We are the dependable country. We have affordable and reliable energy and we must use it right now.”

There’s no love lost between Pfluger and the energy policies of the departing administration of former President Joe Biden.

“The last four years have been a complete disaster,” he told me. “I got to hand it to the Democrats. They’re smart. They’re cunning. They come up with every tool, every aspect of weaponization, and they throw everything at you, and they’re relentless. [Trump] is inheriting a complex web of the regulatory deep state that came after my district.”

Pfluger takes that “extremely personally.”

“They came after the Permian Basin. They came after the Bakken. They came after the Utica, the Marcellus, and every other producing area. And quite frankly, they came after American families, most importantly those that are in the lower socioeconomic bracket, Pfluger said. ”The high prices, the higher energy inflated prices as a result of Biden’s bad policies, hit them the hardest.”

“But when President Trump took the oath of office, when he gave his inaugural address, he wasn’t three or four minutes into it before he started talking about a national [energy] emergency,” Pfluger told me. “And that means he’s going to unleash the full authority of his power, that he is going to demand from Congress that we do something about this, and that we write the legislative text to right the ship and to move us in a better direction.”

Trump’s vigorous week one energy agenda—from declaring a national emergency, to rescinding scores of Biden energy policies, to an executive order that aims to “unleash American energy”—was no surprise to Pfluger. “When President Trump set foot on the tarmac at the Midland Odessa international airport, just a few months ago, his first words to me were ‘drill baby drill.’”

“Without energy, we don’t do anything. We don’t have a military, we don’t have manufacturing—we have nothing,” he added.

If Republicans fail to fix America’s energy problems now, America will not be prepared for the coming decades. “The demand for electricity right now is going to increase by at least 50% over the next 10 to 15 years. We know that right now AI alone will add 6% to 7% to the overall consumption in this country and worldwide,” Pfluger told me. “It’s going to be a big problem.

“Without [energy], we’re not not only going to be overtaken by countries like China, but that we might lose our way of life,” Pfluger concluded. “This is existential to us.”

If energy security is national security, it’s no surprise then that there is renewed interest in purchasing Greenland from the Danes. Not only does Greenland already host what was once known as the Thule Air Base, which was since taken over by the Space Force and renamed Pituffik Space Base, but it also has vast untapped mineral, oil, and natural gas wealth. Geopolitically, the Arctic is heating up. 

Pfluger seems open to the idea of acquiring Greenland, but regardless if America does make its largest land purchase in the nation’s history (yes, larger than the Louisiana Purchase), Pfluger says that, more importantly, Trump is reasserting and regaining America’s leverage over other nations by “thinking outside the box.”

“President Trump is thinking strategically,” Pfluger said. “He’s a businessman, and he understands leverage, and he understands using these things in a way that will help secure our future. So, I can’t wait to have these discussions with him and with the Congress as to how we better secure our future.”

Greenland or no Greenland, Republicans are going to have to solve America’s energy problems. To make lasting change, that means getting through the budget reconciliation process in Congress.

“Republicans are working hard,” Pfluger said of budget reconciliation preparations. “Let’s use this as a prediction moment: I believe that we are going to make the case that deregulating has such an enormous economic growth benefit, that it can be part of reconciliation. I believe that when we deregulate, and when we cut the red tape and the bureaucracy out, that you will see a massive GDP growth rate factor in as part of reconciliation.”

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