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Tag: gas prices
Biden takes credit for falling gas prices

As Gas Prices Fall, Republicans Are Lying About Joe Biden's Energy Policy

President Joe Biden "shut down American energy," Rep. Steve Scalise hollered with great confidence. The Louisiana Republican was nominating Kevin McCarthy for House speaker when he appended some commentary unburdened by facts.

Scalise painted a sad, sad picture of American families "who can't even afford to put gas in their tanks." They can't "make it to the grocery store because we have such horrible energy policy," he said.

The evidence fails to support the melodrama. "National gas prices drop to 18-month low," Forbes reported on Dec. 20, "and could hit $3 By Christmas."

In Louisiana, a gallon of regular now averages $2.90. This reality may be spied in the prices hanging outside Baton Rouge gas stations. And if we're not mistaken, Biden is still president.

Scalise went on to warn of threats to our energy security. "There's absolutely no reason that we need to rely on foreign countries to produce our energy," he stated.

Scalise is right about that. We don't need to rely on others to produce energy. But guess what, we don't.

"Exxon, Chevron Focus on Oil Projects in the Americas," read a Wall Street Journal headline that very day. The growth of U.S. shale has eased Western oil companies' concerns about securing oil, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Exxon is now spending big to raise oil and gas production by 500,000 barrels a day by 2027. It is selling assets in Africa and the Middle East and plans to expand in the Permian Basin of New Mexico and West Texas — and elsewhere in this hemisphere. The U.S. has just granted Chevron a new license to again pump oil in Venezuela.

Measuring energy independence by exports-minus-imports, 2021 saw our highest level of energy independence in history. Biden was president, then, as well.

Is Biden set on moving us to new low-carbon technologies? He is, and Exxon and Chevron say they are planning to expand in that direction, too. We can assume they know the energy business.

Natural gas prices in Europe have fallen below what they were before Russia invaded Ukraine. Fears that cutoffs of Russian energy would freeze much of Europe this winter have not materialized. Why? Because giant ships carrying U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) are sailing to Europe from ports in Louisiana and Texas.

"U.S. LNG has become a foundation for European energy security," said energy historian Daniel Yergin. Warmer weather helped reduce demand, for sure, but American natural gas more than met the demand.

The United States is now the world's biggest producer of natural gas. Cooling it to a liquid state makes it a lot easier to transport long distances.

LNG shipments to Europe more than doubled last year. As a result, gas storage facilities in Germany, once very dependent on Russian natural gas, are now near full. And lower energy prices helped France's inflation rate fall to 6.7 percent.

America's biggest LNG terminal is located near the Sabine Pass River, between Louisiana and Texas. There are others in Louisiana, with more on the way. U.S. exporters enjoyed record revenues in 2022, meanwhile, and expect more of the same this year.

If Scalise and his Republican colleagues limited their complaints to Biden's border policy, they might have had a point. But they kept beefing about rising gas prices that were actually falling — and higher food prices that were also going down. Not distinguishing yesterday's news from today's news is something we've gotten used to. We don't expect much in the way of updates tomorrow.

But Joe Biden is definitely president. And there is zero evidence of his "shutting down" American energy, at least for those of us stuck in the world of reality.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Joe Biden's energy policy?

Ans: President Joe Biden has outlined a comprehensive energy policy to transition the United States to clean, renewable energy sources while creating jobs and addressing climate change. This includes a plan to invest in energy-efficient infrastructure, electrify the transportation sector, and increase the use of clean energy sources such as wind and solar power.

What has the Republican Party said about Joe Biden's energy policy?

Ans: Some members of the Republican Party have criticized President Biden's energy policy, claiming that it will lead to higher gas prices and harm the economy. However, these claims are not supported by the facts. In reality, gas prices have declined under President Biden, and his energy policy is expected to create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

On Gas Prices, AAA Credits Biden But Republicans (And Media) Keep Lying

On Gas Prices, AAA Credits Biden But Republicans (And Media) Keep Lying

The web page may be perfectly white, but sometimes the old yellow journalism still shows through. Take this article from NBC News warning against how inflation is making it hard for Democrats to survive the upcoming election.

With gas prices up again and a potential recession looming, voters are once again telling pollsters that inflation is the most important issue facing the country, reversing the boost Democrats enjoyed over the summer when the public was more concerned with issues like abortion rights and threats to democracy.

What’s wrong with that? Other than the fact that Republicans haven’t put forward a single idea for how to reduce inflation and women have definitely not forgotten about losing a fundamental right? Gas prices are actually still on their way down. There was a mild rise in the first two weeks of October, but that increase was over well before that NBC article was written. AAA reports an average price drop again this week and has a very different headline on their current article: “As October cruises toward the finish line, gas prices look less scary.”

And the AAA says there is someone to thank for delivering on lower gas prices as the nation heads toward not just the election, but the holiday season. That someone is President Joe Biden.

Gas prices are down, in part because … “the Biden Administration’s plan to continue tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve into December has helped temper oil prices.” According to the AAA spokesperson, that response by Biden “will help take the pressure off pump prices, benefitting drivers and their wallets.”

The real news? Gas prices are down, and Biden is helping to both bring them down and keep them lower. That doesn’t seem to be dominating the news.

Meanwhile, Republicans like former Nevada Trump Campaign Chair Adam Laxalt, who has strong ties to the oil and gas industry and is challenging Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, are running ads blaming Biden for high gas prices. And somehow, the media is not calling them out on those lies.

While we’re at it, can we simply stop pretending that news outlets searching the country for the gas station sign with the highest prices are being the least bit truthful? Because every single television broadcast and newspaper headline seems to be selling Americans on the idea that things are worse than they are. It’s not because they’re all in some conspiracy to elect Republicans. In some ways, it’s worse than that.

In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen two articles and a television segment that featured this image from Getty.

What’s wrong with this image? Well for one thing, it’s very hard to square with the $2.95 I paid to fill up my wife’s Subaru this weekend.

The sign in this image comes from San Bruno, California. California is, almost without fail, home to the highest gas prices in the nation, in part because of special formulations designed to drive down the once infamous smog in California’s cities. But that’s not all. San Bruno has the highest prices in California. Why? Because it’s the area immediately around San Francisco Airport. These are not commuter prices. They’re not even San Francisco commuter prices. They’re the prices you pay when you’ve made it all the way back to SFO and just realized you forgot to stop and top up that rental car.

And the prices on that sign? Even factoring in all the reasons why this isn’t an accurate representation of costs, the truth is that these prices are more than $1 above the prices in San Bruno today. Why? Probably because the image was actually taken weeks ago, when prices were higher.

This is simply an image made by someone scouting around for the worst possible numbers to put things in the worst possible light. In much of the media, even network programs anchored on the East Coast, pictures of gas pumps are always from California, and all of them are from locations where the prices are above the average of those areas. These images aren’t representative of actual prices for Californians, much less the rest of the nation. Using such images isn’t just lazy, it’s scaremongering, deceptive, and plain old bad journalism.

That a side effect of this bad journalism is helping other people who are also lying about gas prices, like Republican candidates, shouldn’t be surprising.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

The Sudden And Remarkable Resurgence Of 'Sleepy Joe' Biden

The Sudden And Remarkable Resurgence Of 'Sleepy Joe' Biden

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

To readers of a certain age who grew up watching cowboy movies on TV, that timeless phrase signals a major plot development. Maybe the scheming rancher with the mustache is ordering his henchmen to saddle up. Alternately, a hero in a white hat may be entering the fray.

Either way, somebody’s about to get a surprise.

Sometimes politics works that way too.

One year ago, I posted the following on my Facebook page: “Regarding Biden's speech about the Afghan collapse: I haven't seen such passionate unanimity among the DC commentariat since they went all-in on the absolute necessity of invading Iraq.”

Pretty much from that day, Joe Biden has been depicted in the national political press as the proverbial Dead Man Walking. “Sleepy Joe” as Donald Trump dubbed him, was headed for a mid-term shellacking.

Come November 8, 2022, resurgent Republicans would take over both houses of Congress and spend the remaining two years of Biden’s futile presidency investigating his troubled son, Hunter. Maybe Hillary Clinton too.

In retrospect, the Afghan retreat wasn’t such a catastrophe after all. After Trump surrendered to the Taliban, agreeing to leave Afghanistan without consulting its U.S.-backed government, the die was cast. Biden either needed to re-escalate or get out fast. One thing you won’t hear today is anybody keen to go back in. It’s both unthinkable and un-thought.

Then came sky-high gas prices and commodity inflation, making the president’s political future look dim. No matter which channel you watched, every TV news broadcast featured somebody griping at a gas pump or bitching about expensive eggs. On supposedly liberal CNN, Wolf Blitzer practically snarled “inflation” at every Democrat he interviewed.

And it was all Biden’s fault, particularly the parts he had absolutely no control over, such as the worldwide price of crude oil.

Let’s Go, Brandon.

Back at the ranch, however, Brandon got going. Or something. Due to additional circumstances beyond the U.S. president’s control, such as China’s sputtering economy, oil prices --and with them the cost of gasoline -- began to drop. And largely due to actions by the Federal Reserve, also outside Biden’s jurisdiction, inflation began to level off.

Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop noticed the supposedly liberal New York Times—sometimes I think that should be the newspaper’s official name—giving the president grudging praise: “Slowing inflation gave Biden a reprieve buthigh prices remain a political problem."

Still high, yes, but moving in the right direction.

Job growth, meanwhile, remained strong. Fully 500,000 Americans found new jobs last month. The news media started to notice that the national unemployment rate had reached a 50-year low. With gas prices dropping, how long before Americans noticed that the U.S. economy is actually quite strong? In politics, momentum counts.

And then came the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, essentially ruling that citizens in different states have different constitutional rights, and that women have fewer of them than men. Kansas voters turned out in record numbers to show what middle America thought of that—an electoral thunderbolt that imperils far-right Republicans.

“The situation has changed with astonishing speed," wrote New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait. “In the span of a few weeks, Biden’s presidency is back from the dead and looking something close to triumphant.”

Even before the Democrats’ recent extraordinary legislative achievements —the Inflation Reduction Act, enacting higher taxes on profitable corporations, enabling Medicare to bargain down drug prices, giving the IRS resources to pursue wealthy tax cheats, and boosting green energy while supporting fossil fuel production in the meantime—polls had begun to show a marked shift in the Democrats’ direction.

Yes, a lot of it’s due to Sen. Joe Manchin’s extraordinary change of heart, but it was old Sleepy Joe who urged Democrats to understand where the West Virginian was coming from. Many progressive Democrats wanted to purge him. Fat lot of good that would have done.

Democrats have even gained a lead over Republicans nationwide in the so-called “generic ballot” asking voters which party they’re inclined to support in congressional elections. As the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank points out, it’s “the first time in the modern era" that “momentum has shifted toward an incumbent president’s party at this point in a midterm election year.”

Of course, polls are only polls, and anything can happen between now and November. The Biden administration has also gotten a lot of help from Republicans. Whatever possessed GOP Senators to vote against health care for veterans sickened by military “burn pits?” Or to kill legislation capping the price of insulin for diabetics?

Then there’s Old Unreliable, Donald J. Trump forcing himself into the spotlight again, the spittle-flecked face of Republican rage. So, what’ll it be, America? Steady Old Good-Government Joe or the Sideshow Ape Man, hooting and flinging feces?

America made this choice once, and decisively.

Must we really do it again?

Consumer Outlook Improves Sharply As Gas Prices Fall

Consumer Outlook Improves Sharply As Gas Prices Fall And Job Numbers Rise

A survey of consumers released on Monday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that expectations of inflation in the next few years has declined for the second month in a row.

The Survey of Consumer Expectations is conducted with a panel of 1,300 household heads every month to gauge how families expect inflation and prices for goods like housing, education, food, and gas to change.

The July 2022 survey found that consumers expect inflation of 6.2 percent over the next year, down from 6.8 percent in the June survey. The results also show that expectations for what it terms "three-year-ahead inflation" have also fallen, from 3.6 percent to 3.2 percent between June and July. The survey found that consumer expectations of price increases for gas and food had fallen "sharply."

In a statement issued with the results, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said the estimate of inflation increases had declined across income groups but were "largest among respondents with annual household incomes under $50k and respondents with no more than a high school education."

The improvements in consumer outlook come along with other positive indicators about the overall health of the U.S. economy.

On August 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hiring in July was far better than expected. The economy added 528,000 jobs, more than doubling the Dow Jones estimate of 258,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent in a return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.

Unemployment hit a high of 14.7 percent in May 2020 under former President Donald Trump, and when Joe Biden took office in January 2021 the rate was at 6.4 percent.

Gas prices have declined every day for at least 50 consecutive days from the record nationwide average high of $5.02 per gallon in June. As of Monday, according to AAA, the national average was $4.05 per gallon. In many states in the South, prices had fallen below $4.00; in Texas, for example, the average is $3.55 per gallon.

In an interview with CNN, Tom Kloza, an analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, attributed the price drop both to drivers' failure to buy gas at higher prices and to President Biden's decision to release a million barrels of emergency oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

In his March 31 speech announcing administration measures to counter high gas prices, Biden noted, "This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply until production ramps up later this year. And it is by far the largest release from our national reserve in our history."

Concerns about inflation have contributed to lower approval ratings for Biden, and voters have frequently cited concerns about the economy as their top issue.

Biden has repeatedly described fighting inflation as his "top domestic priority" and has criticized Republican proposals that would raise taxes on the middle class while starving programs like Social Security and Medicare of funds.

The Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that would raise tax rates for large corporations and enhance the IRS' ability to pursue wealthy individuals for tax evasion, passed the Senate on August 7. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if it is enacted, the legislation will help to reduce the deficit and support "the Federal Reserve's efforts to bring down inflation."

Biden has said he will sign the legislation after its expected passage on August 12 in the House of Representatives.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.