There are countless grounds on which to attack President Joe Biden’s record, including his energy policy. But Republicans for some reason keep attacking him for doing something he hasn’t actually done: cutting off the drilling of the American oil.
“Joe Biden’s war on American energy is one of the key drivers of the worst inflation in 58 years, and it’s hitting every single American family very, very hard,” former President Donald Trump says.
“The Biden admin would rather let dictators pump their oil than allow America to use our own energy resources,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) says.
But this isn’t true. In the last six months of last year, the U.S. produced 79 million barrels of oil per day, the most of any six-month period on record. December was the highest month of oil production in American history. U.S. natural gas production is similarly at record-high levels.
Yes, Biden talks as if petroleum is bad. But it’s mostly talk. Biden wants to send the message that he is taking America green. He wants to sound all modern and forward-looking and convince his base that he’s taking on Big Oil and moving us to a post-carbon economy.
At the same time, Biden knows that the economy will be strong only if we produce plentiful energy, and that to dampen Bidenflation, he also needs lots of oil production. So how does Biden straddle this divide?
Biden allows American oil companies to keep pumping oil and gas — at record numbers, and including on public lands — while advancing anti-oil policies that would handcuff U.S. energy production after Biden leaves office or at least after he’s won reelection.
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Biden knows that our oil and gas industries are our golden geese. He is happy to issue American oil a death sentence in the theoretical future — say, by cutting off oil and gas exploration in the part of Alaska explicitly set aside for oil and gas exploration.
This isn’t a defense of Biden: he’s advocating bad policies and lying about it. Instead, this is a warning to conservatives and Republicans: critique Biden’s policies and rhetoric, but don’t claim he has cut off oil and gas. He hasn’t.