Biden Responds to Skyrocketing Gas Prices By Vowing to Raise Taxes on Oil Companies
On Thursday, CNN Enterprise’ Matt Egan wrote that “President Joe Biden is being attacked for $3 gasoline. However the fact is the White Home isn’t guilty for prime gasoline costs — and has few choices to decrease them.”
The explanations for the seven-year excessive in gasoline costs, he claimed, have been all of the empty highways and planes final yr through the pandemic. Gasoline was low-cost and there was no demand to drill for it. Now, excessive vaccination charges imply individuals are again on the roads and within the skies.
“The issue is that provide is having a tough time catching up. And Biden doesn’t have a magic wand to repair that in a single day,” Egan wrote.
Whereas we are able to debate the reality of some or all of these statements, Egan forgets that Biden has a magic wand to verify gas prices keep excessive. A number of wands, truly — and he’s been waving them furiously for the reason that first day of his administration.
He waved one the day earlier than Egan wrote his piece.
The president was visiting Crystal Lake, Illinois, to promote his infrastructure plan within the Chicago suburbs. When you’ve seen Biden’s song-and-dance act on the infrastructure plan earlier than, you know the way he emphasizes that you just gained’t must pay a single penny (generally it’s a single cent) for it. It’ll be companies and fats cats and households making greater than $400,000 footing the invoice.
“By the best way, the plan for infrastructure is paid for — it’s paid for,” Biden mentioned. “And this plan that I’m speaking about, which is actually costly should you add all of it up — effectively, guess what? The very fact is that it’s paid for as effectively.”
How so? Nicely, “the final couple years, for instance, 55 of the Fortune 500 corporations making billions of {dollars} didn’t pay a single penny in taxes. Not one single cent.”
That’s gonna change with ol’ Uncle Joe round.
“If we finish tax breaks for fossil fuels and make polluters pay to scrub up the messes they’ve made, that might elevate $90 billion. I’m not asking them to do something that’s unfair, simply not going to subsidize them anymore,” Biden mentioned. “They’re doing effectively, thanks. And the messes they made, they need to clear up.”
Is President Biden chargeable for excessive gasoline costs?
It’s not clear the place precisely he’s getting this, because the $90 billion quantity hasn’t come up frequently. Nevertheless, the Each day Caller’s Michael Ginsberg wrote that “Biden seemed to be referencing a sequence of provisions in his $6 billion funds proposal for 2022.
“One provision, the intangible drilling value deduction, would require oil and gasoline corporations to pay extra taxes on wells. One other, the Superfund excise tax, provides a tax to each barrel of crude oil that corporations produce, so as to fund cleanups of Superfund websites.”
Biden labors below the misapprehension that that is going to be handed on to the executives at Exxon.
He, like many Democrats, hears a hypothetical ExxonMobil tycoon in a high hat and monocle rasping: “Biden’s lastly put an finish to the gravy prepare. I’m going to have to carry off on the yachts for the subsequent few years.” Then our hypothetical government lights his Dunhill with a $20 invoice as an alternative of his normal $100.
What Biden ought to hear as an alternative is the creaking of ladders going up in entrance of gasoline station worth boards from sea to shining sea, as station attendants start taking down the three in entrance and changing it with a 4.
That’s one wand Biden is planning to wave, however he has a lot extra — notably in terms of America’s power independence.
On his first day in workplace, he waved a wand and made the Keystone XL Pipeline go away. One other wand appears to be caught in the meanwhile; whereas the administration tried banning new oil and gasoline leases on federal lands and waters, that transfer was struck down by a decide final month.
The irony is that because the Biden administration appears to be like to decrease our personal capability to supply power, it has been encouraging OPEC nations to extend theirs.
On Monday, after OPEC talks stalled on manufacturing curbs, the White Home introduced it has been “engaged with related capitals to induce a compromise resolution that may enable proposed manufacturing will increase to maneuver ahead,” Reuters reported.
It is a short-term reply to the Biden administration’s downside.
Long run, gasoline costs are going up, particularly if Biden follows via with waving his greatest wand: the 50 p.c discount in carbon emissions he promised when he re-entered the Paris local weather settlement. If the White Home strikes towards that purpose in earnest, $3 gasoline will appear positively quaint.
If the president had Matt Egan’s magic wand to scale back gasoline costs, he may half-heartedly wave it to make public discontent go away for a short while.
Nevertheless, we have to understand that costly gasoline is a function, not a bug, of Biden’s power agenda. The worst is but to come back.
Biden Responds to Skyrocketing Gas Prices By Vowing to Raise Taxes on Oil Companies
