Biden’s Blame Game
Hey, everyone. Remember this guy?
That was Biden on the campaign trail.
Yep, our C-student president absolutely delivered on his radical promise. On his first day in office he cancelled the Keystone XL Pipeline and enthusiastically embarked on a war on fossil fuels, doing everything in his power to make oil and gas exploration difficult and expensive in order to push up the price of gas and ordinary Americans into electric cars or city buses.
Today he’s shuffling around the wreckage of our economy, refusing to accept responsibility for high gas prices and out-of-control inflation, while trying to blame the crushing costs alternately on Putin and on the oil companies.
The only thing Biden is good at is pointing fingers.
No wonder the latest poll from Reuters has his approval at 36%. One year ago, that same organization gauged his popularity at 53%. Of course, Biden was just getting started with his plan to nuke the economy in June of 2021.
In a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Biden Got The Energy Market He Wanted,” Karl Rove offers a fact-based explanation of what led to today’s catastrophe. Facts Biden would prefer you never saw.
Since the Journal is paywalled and I think this piece is important - no matter what you think of Rove - I’m quoting liberally from it:
On his first day in office, Mr. Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and halted new leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A week later, he banned new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, and in June he shut down exploration on existing leases in ANWR. In October, he increased the regulatory burdens on building pipelines and other infrastructure. This February he limited leasing in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. At every turn Team Biden has worked to restrict and reduce domestic oil and gas production…
Biden should stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s assault on small U.S. refineries, which produce roughly 30% of America’s gasoline and diesel. Longstanding EPA regulations require them to blend renewable fuel into their product or purchase special credits in a marketplace, but most can’t blend in ethanol because it’s too corrosive to be moved through pipelines. The EPA has long solved this problem by routinely granting these refiners exemptions if no credits are available, as provided by law.
Earlier this month, the EPA announced it is essentially ending exemptions and punishing refiners by retroactively denying exemptions back to 2016, requiring the industry to pay billions. Even the EPA admits consumers will have to cover these costs. Industry leaders fear some refineries won’t be able to operate under the new regime and will instead shut down, reducing the supply of gasoline and diesel still further.
Biden’s popularity has been in freefall since August after his reckless troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which cost 13 servicemen and women their lives and severely injured another 18.
Gas prices, which rose 56% before Putin ever invaded Ukraine, have been killing his poll numbers ever since.
Here’s something the White House can’t deny: On January 21, 2021 the average price of a gallon of gas was $2.39. On February 22, 2020, two days before the invasion of Ukraine, gas was $3.52 a gallon.
High gas prices are Biden’s fault, not Putin’s.
Yet Biden yammers on, now trying to shift blame to greedy oil companies, as he points to the large number of unused leases for exploration. Biden knows - or should know - that many of those are on land so isolated that there’s no way to transport oil to refineries, IF the exploration detects any oil at all.
To lower prices, Biden foolishly tapped into our country’s strategic oil reserves, which were never intended to be used for cost control. Worse, the releases have had virtually no effect on gas prices.
Now Biden has a new plan to try to revive his approval rating. He wants Congress to suspend the federal 18.4-cent tax on gasoline and the 24.4-cent tariff on diesel. Of course that would leave a $10 billion “hole” in the Highway Trust Fund that’s used for much-needed infrastructure.
Oh, and Biden wants states to join him in tax relief.
“I’m calling on states to either suspend the state gas tax as well or find other ways to deliver some relief,” he said this week.
“State gas taxes average [another] 30 cents per gallon. Already, some states have acted.
Lol.
Paging State Sen. Louise Lucas and her brick wall of Democrat acolytes. In their dogged determination not to let Gov. Glenn Youngkin have a win, she led the charge to kill Youngkin’s plan for a three-month state gas tax holiday.
Looks like Lucas doesn't respect Biden either.
Finally, Biden called “on the industry to refine more oil into gasoline and to bring down gas prices.
“Last week, I sent a letter to the CEOs of the largest oil-refining companies asking them to work with my administration to bring refineries back online to get more gas to the pump at lower prices.”
Our geriatric-in-chief is dazed and confused. After battling and belittling the fossil fuel industry for years he now expects oil companies to shift into high gear, trusting that his administration won’t bring down the regulatory hammer once again should prices drop.
The oil industry doesn’t trust this president. Nor should it.
The stated goal of the left is to kill fossil fuels, suburbia and the combustion engine. They want to push Americans into urban, ant-colony living, make car ownership something only John Kerry can afford and give the little people bus passes.
That won’t happen and all these policies do is crush American families.
In fact, everything Biden has done since he took office has hurt the country and crippled our economy. The least he can do is apologize.
Instead, he’s finger pointing. Hey, it’s his only talent.
