There are multiple causes for the higher costs of oil and natural gas but Fox News wants you to think there’s only one thing and one person to blame: President Joe Biden and his green agenda.
On Friday’s Your World show, National Taxpayers Union Executive Vice President, Brandon Arnold helped out with the fear mongering.
Host Charles Payne “asked,” “Is the president’s green agenda threatening to send household bills even higher? … The election’s over. We’re running out of the strategic petroleum reserve and no one’s doing anything about NatGas in the Northeast. How bad is it going to get?”
Arnold replied, “I think it’s going to get bad. I know it’s very, very frustrating, very concerning to hear the president say he’s essentially just going to double down on all of his failed policies. This is basically saying the beatings will continue until morale improves, but guess what? His policies are going to be even more acute? We’re going to feel them even more acutely heading into these cold months.”
“The Feds actions will eventually drive down inflation a little bit,” Arnold continued, “but we’re seeing very little assistance on that effort from Congress and this White House. In fact most of their policies are pushing in the wrong direction.”
Payne said, “At some point, we may hear a victory lap as inflation is coming down, but it’s going to probably come down because recession is the next big thing.” He also claimed, “We need more refineries in this country and still, all we get mostly is lip service.”
Arnold called investments in renewable energy “all fine and good,” but he said, “those projects aren’t coming on line for many, many years, and part of the problem is because of this president’s policies when it comes to permitting. They haven’t passed a permitting reform bill.”
“These policies aren’t going to work,” Arnold continued. “We have high energy prices on the horizon for the foreseeable future.”
According to Kiplinger, there are several reasons for higher gas prices. “First, blame the COVID-19 pandemic, which threw oil markets severely out of whack two years ago. They still haven’t fully recovered from the damage the virus inflicted,” it reported in June. Also, the war in Ukraine and energy companies themselves. Those companies are “limiting how much they invest in new production so that they can reward their investors with bigger dividends and stock repurchases,” Kiplinger said, which is good for stockholders but not consumers. Yes, Kiplinger listed Biden’s efforts to move into renewable and green energy, as a factor, but not the only one. Climate change is also a factor.
Recently, Biden announced “$2.8 billion in grants to expand domestic manufacturing for electric vehicles and the electric grid,” The New York Times reported in October, and released “15 million additional barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve” this winter. The Biden administration is also providing $13 billion in funds to provide winter heating assistance for low income Americans and rebates for heat pumps and other energy efficient upgrades.
So President Biden is taking steps to alleviate high gas and heating bills as well as working to mitigate climate change but neither Payne nor Arnold mentioned any of that.
You can watch an early salvo for the 2024 election below, from the November 11, 2022 Your World.
