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The Jewish Home | JUNE 2, 2022
Political crossfire
Gas Prices Are Through the Roof. That’s Just How Biden Wants It by Marc A. thiessen
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as president was to halt all new federal leasing. It was only after a Louisiana judge struck down his moratorium last summer that his administration involuntarily resumed leasing. Releasing gas from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as Biden has been doing, is little more than a symbolic measure, whose impact even he admits is “unknown.” Taken together, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Democrats welcome high gas prices as part of an intentional strategy to speed our transition away from fossil fuels. They don’t like the political blowback, so they are trying to divert blame onto Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Biden did in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week. But many Americans are beginning to suspect that, just as the government deliberately raised the cost of cigarettes to curb smoking, Democrats want to see gas prices rise so that Americans will stop using fossil fuels. Even if they were to succeed in using high gas prices to coerce more Americans
(c) 2022, Washington Post Writers Group
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doing everything in their power to increase domestic production. After a federal judge invalidated an offshore oil and gas lease sale in January, the administration chose not to appeal and has since canceled three transactions in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska – taking millions of acres off the auction block. The Post called the move “a victory for climate activists intent on curbing U.S. fossil fuel leasing,” which “effectively ends the possibility of the federal government holding a lease sale in coastal waters this year.” Worse, the administration is about to let the nationwide offshore drilling program expire next month without a new plan in place. This is exactly what Biden has promised his climate-obsessed left-wing base. While President Donald Trump opened 100 million acres of public land and water to exploration, Biden promised in 2020 to ban all “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” And one of his first acts in his first week
into buying electric cars, there is no infrastructure to support those vehicles. Biden has set a goal of making half of all new car sales electric in less than 10 years. But there are fewer than 46,000 EV public charging sites in the United States, and just 5,627 fast-charging sites. We need 1 million fast-charging stations to support the administration’s goal, ABC News reports. The infrastructure bill Biden signed will produce just half that number by 2030. And while raising the cost of smoking does not harm our national security, raising the cost of fossil fuels does. One of the great geostrategic developments of the early 21st century was our nation’s emergence as an energy superpower. On Trump’s watch, the United States supplanted Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer. This not only created jobs for Americans, it also transformed the national security landscape in our favor. Now, Biden is desperately turning to the United States’ enemies for oil. In March, he sent officials to Venezuela to discuss lifting sanctions and allowing the country to sell its oil on the international market. And two weeks ago, his administration eased restrictions on Chevron, the main U.S. oil company in Venezuela, allowing it to enter talks about restarting production. Why would Biden want to increase our dependence on rogue states such as the Russian-, Chinese- and Cuban-backed regime in Caracas? Simple. He doesn’t want to increase domestic production because he sees the crisis with Russia as an opportunity to speed our “incredible transition” from fossil fuels. In Tokyo, he just said the quiet part out loud.
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pproaching his 500th day in office this week, Joe Biden is the least popular U.S. president at this point in his first term in the modern polling era. His approval rating might drop even further now that Americans are home from their Memorial Day weekend travels. According to AAA, this was one of the most expensive Memorial Day travel periods on record, with gas prices hitting $4.62 – the highest average price at the pump ever recorded. But as Americans were struggling to put gas in the tank, President Joe Biden appeared to praise high gas prices as a necessary part of our historic shift away from fossil fuels. “Here’s the situation,” Biden said at a Tokyo news conference on May 23, “when it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, G-d willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.” An “incredible transition”? For Americans barely making ends meet, the only thing incredible about gas prices is how high they are. But this was not just another Biden gaffe; it is administration policy. Testifying before Congress on May 19, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland repeatedly refused to say that gas prices are too high. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, asked her point blank: “Do you believe that gas prices are too high?” The obvious answer was: “Yes, senator, of course they are.” But instead, Haaland hemmed and hawed. When Barrasso asked again, “It sounds (like) you’re unwilling to say that gas prices are too high,” she still refused to say they were. The message was unmistakable. If the Biden administration cared about high gas prices, they would be
