GOP Rep. Green: SWIFT Sanctions a Half-Measure, Putin Will Keep Making Money if We Don’t Hit Energy

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.,” Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) stated that the move by the Biden administration to block some Russian banks from the SWIFT international banking system is a half-measure because of the exceptions for energy and that because energy is exempt, Putin will keep making money as the price of oil increases.

Host Stuart Varney asked, “Can President Biden take any credit here?”

Green responded, “No, I don’t think so. President Biden stair-stepped this process and it emboldened Putin at the beginning. We could have been definitive, decisive from the beginning and perhaps even stopped it from happening. So, I almost blame Biden. His initial words were great, the rhetoric — I told him, hey, they’re getting this one right, even Blinken’s comments. And then they executed just in half-measures — keep — and even the SWIFT transactions, they’re talking about making exceptions for energy. That would be the whole point of what we do is to shut down their energy economy. It’s 40% of their economy and oil is 101 or 102 bucks right now. It’s going to maybe 120, 130. That just doubles Putin’s income. So, we are just doing half-measures from our administration.”

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