Recent GDP economic numbers prove the U.S. has entered into recession – two consecutive quarters of negative growth though President Joe Biden and some in the media want to tell us the definition of recession has changed.
After close to $10 trillion of government spending, we are living through sky high inflation – too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. And now President Biden, Senator Maggie Hassan, and the rest of the Democrats in Congress are telling us that their new trillion dollar bill will spend our way out of inflation.
Does this make sense to anyone?
On President Biden’s first day in office he revoked the permit for the Keystone pipeline, killing the project that would have expedited oil to the U.S., and numerous jobs related to it. This deliberate choice resulted in gas and oil now being delivered by train and trucks using more fuel than the pipeline and by some estimates adding an additional $.32 per gallon to transport.
President Biden then kept his foot off the gas when his administration ended financing for overseas oil and coal – causing upheaval and uncertainty in energy projects and banking.
Biden then nominated Saule Omarova to be the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, who was quoted as saying she didn’t have a problem if small oil and gas companies went bankrupt (thankfully, Senate Republicans defeated her).
But this did not stop the Biden administration and Congress’s pursuit of a Green New Deal. Senator Hassan and her colleagues confirmed John Kerry as a climate tsar, who now flies around the world on a private plane telling us to stop using fossil fuels. According to POLARIS PAC, Kerry’s private jet travel alone since taking office would be equivalent to air conditioning a 16,000-square-foot home for 95 consecutive years.
Now, President Biden is traveling the world trying to urge other nations to accelerate overseas drilling and increase the supply of oil and gas. What he should be doing is traveling to North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Texas to find out what his administration can do to help our own energy producers. American fuel is cleaner and safer than from other countries. Asking for dirtier energy from other countries is not just environmentally counterproductive, but many of these countries are hostile to America.
These extreme policies were not decisions that were based on the energy needs of our country – it was a result of misguided and dangerous notion that if the U.S. were to demonize and penalize fossil fuels, then magically a new source of renewable energy would appear, giving our nation a mythological source of cheap and clean energy for centuries to come. But back on earth, that technology is simply not available to consumers right now. The Biden administration’s ideological determination has proved to be much more akin to Icarus flying too close to the sun, except that it is the American family that ends up crashing into the rocks as we pay dollar after dollar for their misguided ideas.
While we have drawn down on our strategic oil reserves, we ended up selling some of it to China. This was made worse when the U.S. House tried to prohibit this sale from ever happening again. Representatives Chris Pappas and Annie Kuster voted to continue this practice.
What adds insult to injury is the hypocritical speeches and ads from the same politicians who created this problem now telling us they want to drill more, or suspend the gas tax.
Senator Hassan, who for more than five years has opposed our own domestic energy production and supported destructive energy policy – now has the nerve to run ads telling us how she wants to suspend the gas tax. Until her election is over? Does she think Granite State voters are this stupid?
This is exactly why people can’t stand Washington politicians who act one way and then say the opposite when they are up for re-election in New Hampshire. Our federal delegation has contributed to this current crisis and their words are cheaper than the price we all pay each month when we open our electric bill or fill up a fuel tank.
The past few years of extreme progressive energy policy and endless spending has been an utter failure. We need leaders who work to build a better future while recognizing the importance of now. Because right now, families across New Hampshire and the nation are paying the price for poor decisions they have made. No matter what they say, they cannot go back and change their decisions, but the next time New Hampshire can choose differently at the ballot box.
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John B. Sullivan Jr. is a retired general contractor living in Bedford.