OPINION:
The following analysis is part of The Washington Times’ Voter Guide, which outlines the candidates’ positions on the most important policy topics.
To tackle inflation, former President Donald Trump’s No. 1 policy goal, if reelected, would be to “drill, baby, drill.”
“I make this pledge to the great people of America, I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy,” the former president said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “We will drill, baby, drill.”
Mr. Trump would also streamline permits for new energy products by undoing the red tape from the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. He will open federal land to drilling, slash subsidies for electric vehicles and eliminate regulations he argues will put the American automotive industry out of business.
When Mr. Trump was president, the United States claimed the title of world’s No. 1 oil and natural gas producer. In 2019, America’s annual gross energy exports exceeded gross energy imports for the first time in 67 years.
Mr. Trump’s plan was comprehensive. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, opened Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing, repealed Obama administration prohibitions on coal leasing on federal land, reformed mining permits and streamlined permitting for liquefied natural gas terminals.
These moves even reduced energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 12%, confounding those who care about such things.
The Biden-Harris administration reversed nearly all these policies. While Vice President Kamala Harris has backtracked on her 2019 opposition to fracking, her campaign largely looks to maintain President Biden’s “clean energy” agenda.
The result of that agenda has been a nearly 30% increase in energy costs since Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden were sworn in, at a cost to the average pocketbook of $4,691. Gasoline prices, for instance, have gone up almost $1 per gallon since the inauguration.
Mr. Biden showed his priorities by “suspending the authority of the local Bureau of Land Management offices to approve leases, drilling permits, and mining operations” and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and its 11,000 jobs on his first day.
A few months later, the administration suspended oil and gas leases in the wildlife refuge, and later that year proposed increasing royalty rates on domestic oil production. In early 2022, planned oil and gas lease sales on public lands were delayed indefinitely.
The regulatory hurdles to energy production kept coming. The administration required oil and gas companies to “disclose greenhouse emissions,” making it more difficult for them to finance their operations. It then promoted a $31 billion windfall gains tax on major oil companies, reducing the incentive for domestic fuel production.
Another Biden-Harris administration rule limited the amount of carbon dioxide power plants could produce annually, forcing the installation of billions of dollars’ worth of new equipment.
Mr. Biden even banned the transportation of liquefied natural gas by train. After that, put an indefinite pause on federal permitting for LNG export projects. Ms. Harris hasn’t clarified whether she intends to continue that policy or not.
In the recent presidential debate, Ms. Harris boasted that “over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.”
Natural gas production has risen under the current administration, but oil and gas producers say this growth is a residual effect of Mr. Trump’s policies and has happened in spite of the Green New Deal agenda.
In response to Ms. Harris’ claims in the debate, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association said: “In just four years, you and POTUS created the single worst regulatory and legislative environment in our industry’s 160-year history. You’ve put into place 250 separate actions designed to put us out of business. And in spite of all that — we worked around you, over you and have beat your team. Now, you want to take credit for what we did in spite of you.”
While she served as California’s junior senator, Ms. Harris signaled her disdain for affordable sources of energy by co-sponsoring the $93 trillion Green New Deal. The Inflation Reduction Act was the first step toward its implementation.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate, likewise signed a bill that would force his state to operate solely on windmills and solar panels by 2040 — an even faster pace than that of the Golden State.
Ms. Harris is a big fan of the Paris climate agreement, and she favors having Uncle Sam force people to drive electric cars. The administration has put in place rules requiring two-thirds of new cars be electric by 2032, despite waning customer interest.
Voters will decide next week whether they prefer a top-down mandated approach to energy or allowing the free market and American ingenuity to light our future.
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