With Inflation Weighing Down American Families, Biden Turns to a Gimmick

The price of energy is too high. Way too high.Oil is more than $100 a barrel. Gasoline is nearly $5 a gallon. This has been an important contributor — though by far not the most dominant — to the 8 percent inflation rate of the past year.A new study suggests that the inflation story has added a $5,200 tax on typical American families. This has got to change. Everybody knows it has to change.President Biden, who erroneously blames high energy costs on Vladimir Putin and American fossil fuel companies, today turned to a new gimmick. It’s kind of an adult toy, called SPRO — the strategic petroleum reserve. He announced today his administration will release one million barrels of oil daily from the SPRO for up to six months.Oil prices fell $7 to around $100 on the news.Stocks fell more than 500 points.Mr. Biden says that move will cut gasoline prices by 10 to 35 cents. I’m taking the under. We will see. Here are some numbers:First, the strategic reserve currently has 568 million barrels.It could sell as much as 4.4 million in the first few days, according to the U.S. energy information agency, but bear in mind that the sell rate will slow as the oil caverns supply diminishes. So let’s just work off of a million barrels a day — say 30 million barrels a month, and 180 million barrels over six months.Now, the world supply and demand balances at roughly 100 million barrels a day. That would come to 3 billion bpd per month, which in turn would be 18 billion bpd for 6 months. So Mr. Biden’s gimmick plan would add 180 million barrels per day compared to a world supply of 18 billion over the six-month period. Kind of like spitting in the wind, isn’t it? A pebble in the ocean. We’ll see if there’s any additional falling oil price effect after today’s drop on the news. Doubtful.Of course the oil reserve is supposed to be there to protect against national disruptions in supply, either from huge natural disasters or war. It’s really a national security tool — not meant to manipulate oil prices in the short run. Mr. Biden today again blamed Vladimir Putin and oil companies for the high price of oil and gasoline. Of course he did. It’s what we love about him.He is consistently selling falsehoods: It’s actually the only consistency he has in an otherwise incoherent and bewildering policy approach.Consider the following: On his very first day in office, Mr. Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, ended ANWR drilling in Alaska, and instituted a phony metric called the social cost of carbon that pretends to capture upstream production costs and downstream consumer uses, measured over centuries. Think about it: This cannot be done.This whole jihad against fossil fuels threw a wet blanket over the entire oil and gas industry, which, by the way, was not only the best in the world, the most affordable in the world, but actually the cleanest in the world. U.S. carbon emissions have been falling for years … and then came the Biden regulatory octopus with tentacles reaching everywhere to stop fossil fuels.The federal energy regulatory commission has essentially banned new pipelines. The interior department has stopped drilling on federal land. The energy department has frozen LNG export projects. The EPA has reinstituted burdensome standards for the endangered species act, the clean water act, and the migratory bird treaty act. NEPA permitting reform has been thrown out the window.And even now with a so-called NATO task force looking to supply more LNG to Europe, the fine print of the document insists on the same regulatory framework that will get the U.S. toward net-zero carbon emissions in eight years. These are all reasons why U.S. oil production is a million and a half barrels below its peak in early 2020. Today Mr. Biden couldn’t resist his usual jihadist attack against America’s great fossil companies, saying: “I’m calling for a ‘Use It or Lose It’ policy. Congress should make companies pay fees on wells on federal leases they haven’t used in years, and acres of public land they’re hoarding without production.” So goes Mr. Biden’s fatwa against fossil fuels. Let me get this right: Even though the oil companies have leases, the regulatory octopus including FERC, the energy department, interior, EPA, SEC, and the Federal Reserve won’t provide the permits, or the pipelines, or the financing for those projects. It’s a classic bait and switch. Uncle Sam gave the leases, but then said: No permits, no pipelines, no funding. So we’re going to impose a fee on you, and that fee comes on top of the 11 tax hikes targeting fossil fuel companies in Mr. Biden’s budget. And those come on top of the tax attack on corporations, small businesses, capital gains, and unrealized capital gains. To be clear, Inflation is being driven by big-government socialist deficit spending financed by Federal Reserve money printing. The inflation rate had moved up from less than 2 percent to more than 7 percent before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Inside this inflation surge, the high cost of energy has played a major role. It has undermined our economic security at home and our national security abroad.It plays right into the hands of the war criminal and crook, Vladimir Putin. Gasoline prices jumped 40 percent before Mr. Putin went into Ukraine. Oil prices jumped nearly 70 percent.These anti-fossil fuel regulatory policies are a self-inflicted wound. We are never going to replace oil and gas. Let’s face that fact honestly. Bank of America has estimated that achieving net-zero carbon emissions will cost $150 trillion over 30 years. That’s an annual cost of $5 trillion.Of course inflation would be turbo-charged. Millions of jobs would be lost. The economy would sink. America would be vastly weaker. This is a price we do not have to pay. Save America. Drill, drill, drill. The cavalry is coming.From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.

With Inflation Weighing Down American Families, Biden Turns to a Gimmick

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