Congressional GOP Leaders Critical of Biden’s Energy, Economic Strategy
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
The top Republican on the U.S. House transportation panel ramped up his criticism of the Biden administration’s response to rising fuel prices and bottlenecks along freight supply chains.
Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s ranking member, criticized White House directives, such as revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline at the start of the administration. Graves and fellow Republicans on the panel also took aim at the administration’s policies that, as Graves put it, “continue to block, discourage and impede energy production, capacity and transportation.”
“We’ve seen plenty of finger-pointing from this administration about why Americans across the country are paying such high energy prices,” Graves said April 5. “But we haven’t heard a word from the president about how his policies, long before Russia invaded Ukraine, have put a chokehold on the development and the safe, efficient transportation of North American energy resources.”
Americans are feeling Putin’s gas price hike at the pump.
That’s why today, I’m authorizing the release of 1 million barrels a day from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve — and taking steps to lay a new foundation for lasting American energy independence through clean energy. pic.twitter.com/aRQgofiryK — President Biden (@POTUS) March 31, 2022
On the other side of the Capitol, senior Republican senators also are blaming the president’s policies and aspects of the administration’s regulatory landscape for the effect economic conditions are having on consumers.
“Families across the country are seeing the impact as skyrocketing inflation eats away at their paychecks each month. People feel the pain from the gas pump to the grocery store,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said recently. “We are paying the price for runaway Democrat spending and Joe Biden’s war on American energy. The only solution is to reverse course. The president must stop his runaway government spending, open the economy and unleash American energy.”
Specific to an April 6 hearing House Democrats held to examine domestic fuel prices, Barrasso added: “The surest way to bring down prices at the pump is to allow American companies to produce more oil here at home. That means offshore, on federal land, and in Alaska. It will help boost the economy, fight inflation and make paychecks go further.”
People feel the pain from the gas pump to the grocery store.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
Republican leaders have acknowledged that paving the way for enhancing domestic energy production is a strategy supported by key freight and transportation stakeholders.
At the recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the panel’s chairman, took aim at oil executives while also criticizing Republican counterparts. “The game Big Oil is playing is unfortunately nothing new. For decades American consumers have been subject to the whims of global petro-dictators and the oil companies that have benefited from doing business with them. Foreign adversaries like Russia’s [Vladimir] Putin can make prices unpredictable and unstable, and Big Oil is profiteering from our continued reliance on this volatile global commodity,” Pallone said.
The chairman went on: “Republicans continue to push the same old oil-above-all policies, ignoring that those policies have led us to greater dependence on this volatile commodity.”
Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell USA Inc., told House lawmakers that discussions about energy dynamics in the marketplace encompasses global factors since such operations consist of international stakeholders. “The global energy disruption caused by the invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the importance and difficulty of moving toward a future in which global economies are less dependent on fossil fuels,” Watkins told the panel. “Ensuring energy security and simultaneously promoting the global energy transition to lower-carbon sources is the critical challenge of our time.”
Biden recently announced a move to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the country’s strategic reserves. That would mark the largest release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Biden
White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained the move to reporters: “The oil market is a global market. And we certainly understand and have seen that, obviously, the actions of President Putin has led to an increase in gas prices, not just here in the United States but in other countries in the world.”
“So we are taking steps that, obviously, a historic release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months, to hopefully give a bridge to … increase domestic production,” she added.
Per background the White House provided: “The scale of this release is unprecedented: The world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per-day-rate for this length of time. This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as [a] bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up.”
According to the Energy Information Administration on April 4, the national average price of diesel dropped 4.1 cents to $5.144 a gallon.
U.S. average on-highway #diesel fuel price on April 4, 2022 was $5.144/gal, DOWN 4.1¢/gallon from 3/28/22, UP $2.0/gallon from year ago https://t.co/PEqmzUB09e #truckers #shippers #fuelprices pic.twitter.com/iaTDQolPHx — EIA (@EIAgov) April 5, 2022
Want more news? Listen to today's daily briefing below or go here for more info:
