The Biden administration blames: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; Greedy big oil companies; refineries and people driving gas guzzlers for gasoline prices hovering at $5 per gallon nation-wide and much more in certain states.
Of course, that is bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted. Biden is on video and in debates saying exactly that. He and his climate zealots want to destroy the US fossil fuel industry. And, amazingly, they expect voters to be happy to pay for it. With every poll they are learning that voters are NOT happy and Democrats are beginning to panic as the mid-term elections creep closer. Yet they doggedly stick to the idea that high gas prices will encourage people to buy an electric car.
Biden was on TV this morning touting an idea to temporarily suspend the 18-cents-per-gallon Federal gas tax. Even Obama thought that was a lame idea. Then he lapsed into blaming the usual suspects for high gas prices. Most people know that his policies of reducing drilling offshore and on Federal land and the heaping of more stringent regulations on drilling and refining are to blame. Oil production is down 9% since Biden took office. Those who do not know that will be informed in the ads during the upcoming campaigns.
Biden has been sucking 1million barrels a day out of the Strategic Oil Reserve. This, cynically, will end just before the mid-terms. He also mandated burning more ethanol this summer and that will further influence grain and food prices. Good luck after that. Ironically, if Biden had not shut down the Keystone XL pipeline we could be getting 900,000 barrels a day from friendly Canada instead of begging Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Shutting down oil and gas drilling in the US and the millions of jobs in the US and buying oil from hostile countries seems crazy to me.
Democrats, at least the more liberal ones, have always believed in open borders. Trump had the border under control and was proceeding with a border wall and the “remain in Mexico policy”. Once Biden was in the oval office he halted construction of the wall and signaled that immigrants were welcome to cross the southern border at will. Huge caravans from Central America and really all over the world, headed for the border. People are processed, given a notice to appear, often a cell phone and flown or bused all over the country. So far, since Biden took office, more than one million illegals have been released into the US. This does not count the as many as 800,000 “got aways” that snuck across while border agents were busy processing massive numbers of illegals. These guys are the ones smuggling drugs. (You may have heard that more than 100,000 people died of Fentanyl overdoses in the last year). So far they have caught 60 men on the terror watch list. I wonder how many terrorists were among the got-aways?
The cost of taking care of these people exceeds $300 billion dollars for welfare, medical care, education, the WIC program, etc. Taxpayers pay for that.
So, we have a crisis at the border because they wanted it. Democrats have always believed that if they brought in enough people and gave them free stuff that they would reliably vote Democrat. They may live to regret it because the Hispanics are leaving the Democrat Party, as demonstrated by the recent election of Republican Mayra Flores in the 34th District in Texas, a long-held blue area. Biden’s approval rating among Hispanic voters has dropped into the low 20s. One of the sources for their animus toward Democrats is the border crisis.
With inflation at around 8.6% and higher for many necessities of life, we are certainly headed for a recession. The Feds tepid efforts to curb inflation suggests that it may last a long time. I lived through one in the late 70s and early 80s and it is not fun.
It took Reagan’s vision and courage to break the inflationary cycle and usher in decades of prosperity. Not gonna happen with this bunch in the White House.