OPINION:
President Biden prepares to turn 80 shortly after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, but it is his energy policy failure that has shown itself to be one for the ages. With winter looming, Americans would be hard-pressed to name a U.S. president who has done more to drive up the price of power.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that while September’s consumer price index climbed 8.2% in the past year, energy led all major categories of consumables with a 19.8% spike. And while all-important gasoline prices declined for nearly 100 days in the summer, they have turned skyward again, hovering around $3.90 per gallon nationally. Over the course of Mr. Biden’s nearly two years in office, gas prices have risen 64%, reports Factcheck.org.
Damage to the U.S. economy extends far beyond higher fuel costs, though. An October study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity exposes as misinformation the president’s claims to be doing all he can do” to reduce pump prices and that U.S. oil and gas production has reached near “record levels.”
“We find that Biden’s policies have shifted the energy supply curve such that we are producing less oil and gas at the range of current price levels that we would have with the Trump energy policies still in place,” the study reads. “The U.S. would be producing between 2 and 3 million more barrels of oil a day and between 20 and 25 more billion cubic feet of natural gas under the Trump policies. This translates into an economic loss — or tax on the American economy — of roughly $100 billion a year.”
A hundred big ones annually are a heavy price Americans are paying for Mr. Biden’s energy perfidy. Saudi Arabia lifted the veil last week on a Biden administration scheme that urged the kingdom in its role as OPEC leader to delay a reduction in oil production until after the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 8. The Saudi revelation came as apparent payback for a U.S. threat of diplomatic retaliation after OPEC refused to delay its planned cuts.
Mr. Biden expressed outrage at the exposure of his secret efforts to keep energy anxieties off the ballot during the upcoming U.S. midterms, vowing to “reassess” U.S. links with the Saudis. Meanwhile, some Senate Democrats have called for ending weapons sales to the nation’s most powerful Arab ally.
Officialdom does not mention, though, that it is the Biden administration’s foolish attempts to resurrect the faulty Iran nuclear deal that has triggered a similar Saudi reassessment of its relations with Washington. How exactly does plying the Saudi’s mortal enemy with billions that can fund an ongoing proxy war on the Saudi-Yemeni border, while eventually leading to a nuclear-armed Iran, secure Middle East peace?
It doesn’t, which is why the kingdom has declined to help Mr. Biden avoid a costly political price on Election Day. As a consequence of the president’s foolish energy policy, Americans face a winter of energy poverty. Their only retaliatory weapon is their vote.
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