California Democrats in the state legislature are discovering that they may not have been running the state very well in recent years.

They questioned state regulators about California’s brewing oil crisis. In the past year, Phillips 66 and Valero have both announced they will be closing a refinery in California, leading to a 21% decline in the state’s refining output over three years. These closures have led to an estimate that gasoline in California could hit prices as high as $8.435 per gallon by the end of 2026.

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State regulators told California Democrats that the state will need to start importing oil from other countries by ship, which will be more expensive and worse for the environment than the state’s previous status quo. The California Air Resources Board admitted it does not look at how its regulations affect gas prices. And the looming threat of more closures still hangs over the state. According to Democratic Assemblyman David Alvarez, “We have a crisis on our hands that may have been self-created by the actions that perhaps have been taken by the state, by regulators.”

If only people had been warning California about this for years.

Plenty of blame should go to the state’s regulators and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). They recklessly pushed through with regulation after regulation with no regard for how they would affect gas prices in the state, all while Newsom tried to punt the blame onto “greedy” oil companies. California has tried to regulate the oil and gas industry out of the state, only to be caught off-guard by the fact that gas prices are skyrocketing as a result.

MEDI-CAL COSTS PER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT RISING 10-15% PER YEAR: REPORT

But Democratic legislators can’t punt the blame to state regulators, either. They are the ones who have increased the gas tax and passed numerous regulations on the oil and gas industry. The party has a veto-proof majority in the legislature and could change the course of the state’s oil and gas regulations whenever they like, and would do so with the support of legislative Republicans as well. If they don’t like the way Newsom’s regulators are regulating the state, they should make it clear by passing legislation directing the executive branch how to execute its regulatory powers. That is what the legislative branch does.

California Democrats are only now noticing this problem because they are seeing the signs of an eventual electoral reckoning that will come when the state’s cost-of-living crisis finally crosses the line for most voters. Democrats, whether in Newsom’s administration or in the legislature, have been running the state into the ground for years. This absolutely is, as Alvarez put it, a crisis that has been “self-created.”