WASHINGTON, D.C.(KXLG)- It was another busy week in news as we saw President Biden’s State of the Union Address, inflation concerns, and lot’s of legislation updates.

We reached out to U.S. Senator John Thune to get his comments on the State of the Union Address and some recent comments he has made in recent press releases.

The first subject was the Ocean Shipping Reform Act and how can that benefit South Dakota directly.

Wasted/stolen cargo and additional fees are also addressed in the bill. At this point he has support from 25 co-sponsors in the Senate. It would be helpful with supply chain issues as well and will give the Federal Maritime Commission more authority and more tools.

Next we spoke on Ethanol and his press release stating Energy Independence is a matter of National Security; saying “finally get serious about leveraging American Agriculture as an energy solution.”

If they sanction Russia energy, which he feels we should. We then would have to ramp up our internal production of liquid fuels. According to the most recent reports we import around 670,000 barrels of oil from Russia a day.

Lastly he gave comments on President Biden’s State of the Union Address, starting with “there were a lot of issues where he’s appealing to what I would call the radical left party”.

Some positives he heard that would receive applause from his side of the aisle.

His final comments spoke on continuing to urge the Administration on bio-fuel and “bring the Russian economy to its knees.”