Josh Shapiro is telling Pennsylvanians he’s saving them a penny when he’s really picking their pockets.

L eading Democrats still haven’t learned the lesson of their defeat to Donald Trump. Their party is stuck in the political wilderness because they spent four years trying to favorably “message” around their policy failures instead of promoting real solutions to Americans’ problems. Now, one of the governors who wants to lead Democrats out of the wilderness — Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro — is making the same mistake.

On January 28, Shapiro tried to make a bombshell announcement. He said that PJM Interconnection — a heavily regulated company that manages the electric grid in much of the mid-Atlantic — settled a lawsuit the governor had filed the previous month. According to Shapiro, the company would stop “unnecessary price hikes” and “save consumers over $21 billion on utility bills.” Clearly, the governor wants to suggest that he’s providing Americans relief from the cost-of-living crisis.

Don’t believe a word of it. Shapiro and his fellow Democrats are to blame for soaring energy costs. And despite the hullabaloo, the governor’s settlement will do nothing to give families lasting relief.

Here are the facts. Electricity rates are soaring — in Pennsylvania and nationwide — because Democrats at the state and federal levels are enacting radical climate mandates that shut down affordable, reliable power plants that run on natural gas and coal. And many of the requirements and standards set by these heavy-handed regulations are not even scientifically possible. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule mandates carbon capture technology that is yet to be invented. At the same time, Democrats have flooded energy markets with subsidies for wind and solar power, which are less reliable and more expensive. Put simply, Democrats have ensured that electricity companies must raise rates to keep the lights on.

Shapiro is complicit. He supported the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which accelerated the deployment of expensive wind and solar energy projects. He didn’t oppose the Biden administration’s power plant rule, which will shut down power plants that provide cheaper electricity. And he has maintained Pennsylvania’s mandate to obtain nearly 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Lo and behold, the state’s electricity prices are nearly 10 percent higher than the national average — the direct result of these foolish policies.

But the real story is that Shapiro is setting his state up for even worse pain. His settlement with PJM is centered on price caps — a favorite and failed Democratic policy that will inevitably lead to less investment in Pennsylvania’s electricity grid. And that’s assuming that the price caps last, which is highly unlikely given the competing federal and state demands to build more wind and solar power. For all his bluster, Shapiro has made a “deal” that he knows won’t survive.

Meanwhile, the governor is pushing a slew of other policies that also make future rate hikes inevitable. He’s defending his predecessor’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which is expected to raise electricity costs by at least 30 percent. That plan has already stopped the construction of a new natural gas power plant, despite rising demand for affordable electricity. The governor has also proposed new energy mandates — the state’s Climate Emissions Reduction Act (PACER) and the Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS) — that would add additional energy taxes on consumers. If the governor gets his way, Pennsylvania families can look forward to spiraling utility bills, an insult to the injuries they’ve already sustained.

This is exactly the kind of foolish policy that Democrats tried, and failed, to mask with slick marketing during the Biden years. Shapiro is trying the same trick, telling Pennsylvanians he’s saving them a penny when he’s really picking their pockets. The governor is widely known to have presidential ambitions, but if he doesn’t give families real relief, his future will be dim.

Real solutions — such as ditching the climate mandates and making it easier to build new energy projects — require real leadership. Josh Shapiro should try it rather than message his way around his mistakes in search of the White House. He should ask Kamala Harris how that worked out.