If there is one thing the Biden Administration excels at, it is blaming everyone and anything to avoid taking responsibility. Its favorite thing to do is play the blame game. When it is clear that out-of-control government spending is causing the highest inflation we have seen in 40 years, President Biden blames the supply chain. When it is clear the supply chain crisis has been caused by government policies that discouraged work, President Biden blames the American people for buying too much. Meanwhile, the cost of food, gas and medicine continues to rise.
Biden’s latest whopper is that Vladimir Putin is to blame for our high gas prices. He even recently began to refer to the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as “Putin’s price hike.” The president has enlisted social media influencers to help spread this disinformation. Here’s the truth: gas prices were rising on Biden’s watch well before Putin’s invasion. The policies this administration has pursued since Day One in office left us vulnerable to the latest price spike.
Let’s look at the facts. This time last year, during President Biden’s first months in office, the national average price for gas was $2.87 a gallon. Compare that to a month ago, before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, gas prices had risen to $3.54. Today, the national average is above $4.00. The American people know these price hikes did not happen overnight or even over the last month. The evidence has been in their paychecks, which are worth less and less each month.
How has the Biden administration caused higher gas prices? Rather deliberately. On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed an executive order to cancel construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have been able to transport 830,000 barrels of oil per day into the United States. Last year, America imported an average of 672,000 barrels per day from Russia. Even before Biden revoked the permit for Keystone XL at the start of his presidency, he served as Vice President for six years while the Obama Administration did everything in its power to slow down construction of this pipeline, aided by radical environmentalists whose only goal seems to be bankrupting the working class.
He signed another executive order to halt oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska – something I was proud to work on and achieve with President Trump. This area is estimated to be home to more than 11 billion barrels of oil, but the Biden Administration has paused the drilling – and is clearly searching for every legal avenue possible to cancel the leases granted there altogether.