One of my early memories, and not a happy one, is sitting in gas lines in the 1970s. My parents would rustle me out of bed early on frigid February mornings, and we’d pack into the Ford and speed over to the gas station.
When we got there, there would often be six or seven cars in front of us. Sometimes, we’d wait 20 or 30 minutes for a fill-up. And we’d notice that every few weeks there would be someone on a ladder posting a higher price on the 20-foot-high sign. It always sticks in my memory because even though I was only about 12 years old, it was a shocking indicator that something terribly wrong was going on in our country. I couldn’t understand how a bunch of Saudi oil sheikhs could hijack the greatest nation on earth.
Fast-forward four decades, and for the first time in my life, we had a president, Donald Trump, who made America energy-independent again. In the last week of December 2020, the United States imported zero oil from Saudi Arabia. Hooray!
In the wake of the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, one of our major domestic energy pipelines, the 1970s malaise was brought back into focus. In many parts of the Southeast, there was no gas to be had at any price because of the supply disruptions. Alas, this wasn’t just a result of some evil foreign hackers. This is the predictable outcome when we have a president who teams with the radical green left and declares war on American energy.
President Joe Biden has said that he wants to eliminate American fossil fuels over the next 15 years. He’s doing his best to keep that promise, starting with his cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. (How deranged does that seem today?) A few weeks later, he stopped oil and gas drilling on federal lands. We have some $30 trillion to $50 trillion of energy resources underneath federal lands and federal waters.
This “America last” energy policy is not just a frontal assault on our economy, transportation system and national security. It is a policy that imposes a hefty tax on the poorest people. According to AAA, when Biden was elected, the average gasoline price across America was $2.20 a gallon. Since then, the price has risen every month, and on May 15 of this year, the average gas price hit $3.04.
Make no mistake: this 84-cent-per-gallon price hike is a highly regressive “tax” on motorists, just as lower gas prices during the Trump administration were the equivalent of a tax cut for consumers. I doubt that billionaire Democratic donors such as Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer or Bill and Melinda Gates, who are significant financial supporters of the war on fossil fuels, care much that gas prices are rising.
But for the rest of us, when the price of a fill-up rises by $10 or $12, that’s a genuine financial hardship. That’s especially true for those on fixed incomes or earning less than $50,000 a year. Yes, indeed, gas prices are often out of the direct control of the president. Biden didn’t cause the Colonial Pipeline sabotage. But if you want people to stop using oil and gas, what better way to achieve that than by making it much more expensive to buy? What did the White House brainiacs think would happen to gas prices if we stop building pipelines, erect new Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to kill oil and gas exploration from Texas up to North Dakota, and outlaw drilling in many areas of the country?
Biden seems oblivious to all this pain as he visits electric car plants and gleefully test-drives these new vehicles. That’s fine. But even if every car bought starting tomorrow was battery-operated, and even if people could afford the $50,000-plus price tag, we’d still need gas for vehicles already on the road for at least the next 20 years. Where are we going to get it? The Saudis?
Meanwhile, the poorest people are now paying his green tax at the gas pump. Most amazingly, Biden still has a straight face while saying that no one with an income of less than $400,000 a year will pay higher taxes under his economic plan. Come on, Joe. Get out of the Washington bubble, and go to a gas station. People of all incomes are paying your gas “tax.”
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.” To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Obama bin Lyin’ and Biden bin Hidin’ while the American economy keeps slippin’ and slidin’.
This is what happens when stupid people are put in positions requiring brain power. They comprehend the power part but not the brains.
AND since most if not all, ARE INSULATED from the pain, they cause WE the people, they don’t GIVE A RATS BUTT how bad it gets…
Remember the 2012 Obama/Biden green energy Con?:
President Obama/Biden is getting hammered for funding renewable energy companies that have since gone belly up.
Since the failure of solar-panel company Solyndra, President Obama’s $80 billion clean-technology program has begun to look like a political liability.
Solyndra Scandal: Key coverage of the investigation into Solyndra, the Silicon Valley startup that collapsed, leaving taxpayers liable for $535 million in federal guarantees .
I downloaded a paper by Mark P Mills, the “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise In Magical Thinking. I’m not a scientist, but this is a great read.
Every time I hear these nitwits say they want to be free from fossil fuels, I laugh. Ain’t going to happen. Just where are the necessary products from fossil fuels to make plastics, carpets, tires, and a host of other items we use are going to come from, thin air? I guess we’ve not seen nothing yet.
AND how many of these nitwits, SUPPORT nuclear energy.. ?! I doubt more than a handful.
And not only will this ‘gas tax’ hit the poorer people in the pocket when they are filling up their car’s gas tank BUT it will also hit them EVERY time they go to buy food. When the cost of transporting the food from field to market goes up those costs are passed along to the consumer in the form of higher food prices.
If anyone actually believed Biden that no one who makes less than $400k will be taxed more they are a fool.
The electric car situation is ridiculous. First of all there are place in this country where having one would be impractical at best. Secondly, you are going to need to have some sort of fuel to create the electricity. And thirdly, the creation of an electric car, specifically the battery, is extremely detrimental to the environment. Furthermore we had Greta preaching about ‘stealing her childhood’ by not ‘thinking green’ while thousands upon thousands of small children are working day and night to mine ballast used in the making of these electric car batteries. Whose childhood is actually being stolen?
Not just that, but with most electric cars, STILL STRUGGLING TO get more than 300 miles on one charge, for folks who often do cross country treks of 1000 or more miles, THAT USUALLY would have taken 2-3 days, WITH those electric cars it would turn into a 6+ day journey.. THREE of travel, Three of sitting in a hotel while the car CHARGES…
THE ANTIFTA RIOTS, THI DEFUND THE POLICE, The riots, where businesses were destroyed, never to open up again were all planned by the DEMOCRAT Marxists like MARXIST ,George SOROS, hate America groups. AND guess who has to foot the bill for all the destruction caused by the ” peaceful Protesters ”, WHY, YOU DO, when you buy your groceries, when you buy your clothes and of course, when you buy gas at the pumps, of course, you could just buy an Electric car, couldn’t you .That was the suggestion by a democrat Sycopant