Senators Toomey and Manchin Win a Battle, But Biden’s War on Fossil Fuels Rages

Yes, Virginia, there is a higher power.President Biden’s anti-capitalist, anti-fossil fuel pick to be the Federal Reserve’s vice chairwoman for bank supervision, Sarah Bloom Raskin, has withdrawn her nomination. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, Ms. Raskin wrote that the Fed should do all it can to allocate capital away from carbon and fossil fuels. She put this in writing and in speeches, and yet during her recent Senate confirmation hearings she tried to falsehood her way through it.Ms. Raskin is exactly the sort of person who should not have even been nominated for that position, but in the Biden administration key appointments are judged on one’s radical zeal against fossil fuels. Climate extremism permeates every single Biden policy, both domestic and foreign.Bravo to Senator Toomey, who led a walkout of 11 GOP Banking Committee senators so a vote couldn’t even be taken.Ms. Raskin also had some ethical problems, being on the board of a Colorado fintech company that was the only such firm to get access to the coveted Fed master account, meaning the transactions wire. She used her pull from prior government positions and the Kansas City Fed besmirched itself by trying to stall the release of that information.Finally, Senator Manchin, who has been so good on so many issues, essentially ended her nomination by declaring a “no” vote with the statement: “Ms. Raskin’s previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs.”So Messrs. Toomey and Manchin are a good team, but the bigger problem remains.Mr. Biden’s war against fossil fuels will continue. He never misses an opportunity to accuse the energy companies of excess profits and price gouging. His press secretary doesn’t understand the importance of pipelines, which are necessary to transport the supply of oil and gas from point A to point B.Mr. Biden’s regulatory octopus centers on the climate change zealots in charge of FERC, the Interior Department, the Energy Department, the EPA, and the White House.He’s thrown such a heavy wet blanket over the entire fossil fuel industry that we’re still producing a million and a half barrels a day less than two years ago. That shortfall is the principal reason why world oil prices and gasoline prices at the pump shot up well before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Mr. Biden has amnesia about that first year, which now includes an 8 percent consumer price index and a 10 percent producer price index increase. Heblames the pandemic, supply chains, Mr. Putin, and the man on the moon for the inflation that was supposed to be temporary, but the reality is his own deficit-spending policies and easy money from the Fed, along with energy supply shortages, are the real, homegrown Biden policy-driven causes of inflation.At the Fed, meanwhile, they’ll probably raise their target rate by a quarter of a percentage point tomorrow, but that’s a futile gesture for a basic inflation that’s no less than 6 percent and may be moving toward 10 percent.Mr. Biden’s other nominees to the central bank will probably get through.Jay Powell will continue as chairman, and will be as confused as ever about inflation or economic growth incentives, or the importance of quantitative easing and the money supply.The new vice chairwoman will be Lael Brainard, who repeatedly in congressional hearings refused to accept the label of capitalist.Then there’s Lisa Cook, from Michigan State, who believes America is racist, white supremacist, and pushes for slavery reparations.So I’m not expecting much out of the central bank.We’re in the middle of an international crisis over Ukraine. We’re going head-to-head with Russia, which is our enemy. We should be using every means at our disposal to defeat the enemy.We don’t need troops on the ground. We need to drill, drill, drill. We need to lift all the restrictions on oil, gas, LNG exports, pipelines, and financing.In the middle of this crisis, the climate tsar, John Kerry, addresses a big energy confab in Houston and talks about the urgent need to spend the next 10 years ending fossil fuels. He fretted publicly about his concerns that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would somehow slow his climate crusade.This isn’t national security — this is inanity. It’s contrary to American interests. Betting against our national security.It just can’t be that hard to understand an all-of-the-above energy policy that seeks to expand our energy base, not to destroy 80 percent of it.Nothing wrong with wind turbines and solar panels, but almost every serious person knows that in the next 50 to 100 years or so, the energy solution is natural gas and nuclear power. The Bidens are opposed to both.So I’ll ask, are they trying to help America, or harm it?From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.

Senators Toomey and Manchin Win a Battle, But Biden’s War on Fossil Fuels Rages

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