Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D- CT) is back from Ukraine — his first trip since the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who worked alongside him to build support for the country. Blumenthal shares what Ukraine needs most in its war with Russia. Plus, how a bill he’s backing could help rein in electricity rates.

Mike Hydeck
Electricity rates, if they skyrocket, power company executives should be banned from getting bonuses. That’s the thrust of a bipartisan legislation being drafted in Washington right now, and it’s really making for some politically interesting partnerships to get it done. Senator Richard Blumenthal is here to tell us about the bill. Senator, welcome back. Good to see you.

Richard Blumenthal
Thank you, Mike.

Mike Hydeck
How are you?

Richard Blumenthal
Good.

Mike Hydeck
We know you just got back from Ukraine, we’re going to ask you about that too, as well. Look, Connecticut continues to have among the highest rates in the country. Electricity rates. It’s been that way for a long time. You are actually partnering with Senator Josh Hawley, a conservative Republican from Missouri, on this. How did this partnership work, and how would this work if it gets across the finish line?

Richard Blumenthal
Well, Mike, since we’re here on Face the Facts, I want to dispel one of the myths that are so widely held by people about the United States Congress. I work with Republicans all the time. I worked with Lindsey Graham, very conservative, who disagreed on everything except Ukraine.

Mike Hydeck
Yeah.

Richard Blumenthal
I’ve worked on Marsha Blackburn on making the internet safer for children. Very conservative Republican from Tennessee. Working with Josh Hawley to lower electricity rates because, by the way, there’s nothing red or blue about excessive charges for electricity. And here is the dirty non-secret for Connecticut: Eversource wants to raise the rates by 18 percent. The rate of inflation in Connecticut is about 3.4 percent. Something is wrong with this picture. When, at the same time, utility executives are lining their pockets with bonuses, in effect rewarding themselves for raising your rates. And we want to stop it through a federal law that would prohibit bonuses for utility executives when the prices increase for electricity are higher than the rate of inflation.

Mike Hydeck
So it would be tied to inflation. Did Josh Hawley reach out to you on this, or did you reach out to him? How did it? I was just fascinated by the partnership.

Richard Blumenthal
You know, we’ve been working he and I on a variety of different issues, on chatbots and the dangers of them to kids. We’ve been working on AI, artificial intelligence, establishing a framework to protect some of the evils that can come from AI. And we were serving together on the Judiciary Committee, on the Antitrust Committee, and we said to each other, you know, these utilities are all monopolies. They charge, in effect, whatever they want. They don’t have any competition. You can’t go to another source for your electricity. Most people cannot. And we said, why don’t we do something about these excessive prices? And bingo, we began working together. He is a former attorney general of his state.

Mike Hydeck
Like you, exactly, right.

Richard Blumenthal
I am a former attorney general of Connecticut. We have a lot of sort of respect for what aggressive law enforcement should be.

Mike Hydeck
Okay, let’s jump into Ukraine. You just went there. What was your trip all about? There are so many: the battlefront, the fact that there are no Patriot missiles to stop, for air defense. What was your conversation about?

Richard Blumenthal
It was a really exhilarating trip. My 11th, the first time I went to Dnipro, which is very close to the front. First member of Congress permitted to go to Dnipro. I saw the military hospital, the incredible courage of these soldiers, brought back from the front with the most gruesome kind of wounds. I went to talk to the abducted children who have been rescued. They’re only a fraction of the 20,000 that Putin has kidnapped. I went to Bucha and visited again the mass grave site. I was there in 2022. Now they have a memorial. It’s a mass grave site for people who were killed by the Russians, literally shot in the head, most of them, and now they’re buried elsewhere. But the gravesite is a place of memory. And I spoke at length to President Zelenskyy.

Mike Hydeck
And now, is this, was this trip for him to convince you to get more U.S. aid? What’s supposed to come out of this trip from your perspective and his perspective?

Richard Blumenthal
I spent a fair amount of time with him. This is probably my I don’t know 25th, 30th meeting with him. We have a good relationship. It was a little bit sad, more than little, because it was one of my first meetings without Senator Graham being there. He and I were partners in this effort, and he said to me, he has three priorities. Number one, the Russia sanctions bill to throttle the revenue going to Putin to fuel his war machine. Number two, more air defense because his people are being bombed every night. When I was there, we had air raids in the middle of the night. We had to go down to a bunker.

Mike Hydeck
And Patriot missiles are the major defense. The worldwide stockpile is down.

Richard Blumenthal
And we’ve depleted our supply of the interceptors.

Mike Hydeck
Right.

Richard Blumenthal
So the Iran war has had consequences throughout the world, and the depletion of our supplies means we have none for him. And he said, “I need to get whatever allies can provide.” And number three, he said Starlink, which would enable him to pinpoint more accurately the launch pads deeper within Russia or the manufacturing plants that are the source of the missiles and drones that Putin is using.

Mike Hydeck
Starlink is the satellite company that’s run by Elon Musk that can survey the planet, basically.

Richard Blumenthal
And he has used it very effectively in Ukraine to turn the tide on the battlefield. And here’s a statistic you’ll want to keep in mind: 35,000 casualties every month. That’s what Putin is suffering. A deficit of $124 billion. That’s 5% of his GNP. When I say Ukraine is turning the tide, it’s in a very tangible way, and it’s to the benefit of our security, because if Putin conquers Ukraine, he will next go to Moldova or Romania or Finland, Sweden, Poland, a NATO ally, and we will be obligated to put troops on the ground. So stopping Putin in Ukraine, their fight is our fight, and we ought to be supporting them. One final point: the director of the CIA went to Moscow, Ratcliffe, to tell Putin do not escalate. At the same time, the failure to provide really strong support means that message is empty, and really ineffectual. So we have to provide more air defense, the Russia sanctions bill, Starlink. I said to President Putin, You’ve given me a pretty good set of homework assignments.

Mike Hydeck
Yeah, President Zelenskyy, you’re talking about.

Richard Blumenthal
President Zelenskyy.

Mike Hydeck
Senator Blumenthal, we got to leave it there.

Richard Blumenthal
Thank you.

Mike Hydeck
Appreciate your time.