Republicans are refining their political attacks on President Joe Biden after he answered demands for a federal ban on Russian energy imports, spotlighting a sticker-shock at the gas pump that they blame squarely on the administration.
Republicans, in Congress and elsewhere, argue Biden has the power to reduce energy costs significantly for economically anxious consumers despite worldwide supply disruptions sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All the president needs to do, Republicans explain, is jettison his liberal energy agenda and embrace policies that encourage and support more domestic exploration and production.
This criticism of Biden was predominating among GOP politicians and aligned political groups Wednesday, roughly 24 hours after the president announced the ban on Russian coal, natural gas, and oil that Republicans had been clamoring for, for several weeks leading up to Moscow’s 13-day-old attempted military takeover of Ukraine.
“When Joe Biden crushed the American energy industry on day one of his presidency, he left Americans dependent on our foreign adversaries for oil. This sent gas prices through the roof and allowed Putin to fund his unprovoked war,” Rep. Jim Banks said in a statement. Banks, a Republican from Indiana, is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus on Capitol Hill.
“Make no mistake,” added Republican Nikki Haley, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and a potential 2024 presidential contender, in a Twitter post. “Biden’s anti-energy policies already hurt our wallets before Putin’s war even started. We must unleash America’s energy industry or risk paying even more at the pump.”
BIDEN’S BAN ON RUSSIAN ENERGY DOESN’T HALT GOP CLAIMS OF ‘LEADING FROM BEHIND’
Biden conceded that action he took to prohibit the importation of Russian energy could increase record-high gas prices.
But the president and his Democratic allies are firmly rejecting the substance of the Republicans’ line of attack, that his policies are stifling domestic energy production and the root cause of the pain voters are feeling at the pump. They argue energy companies are choosing not to produce more oil and gas in the U.S. and insist the GOP is playing politics, using the war in Ukraine to capture congressional majorities in the midterm elections.
Biden, who declared Russian strongman Vladimir Putin the culprit for gas prices that hit a national average of $4.25 per gallon as of Wednesday afternoon, is warning oil and gas concerns not to attempt to capitalize on overseas instability by price-gouging.
“We understand that Putin’s war against the people of Ukraine is causing prices to rise,” Biden said Tuesday after announcing the ban on Russian energy imports at the White House. “It’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit this situation or American consumers.”
“It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production,” the president added. “That’s simply not true.”
In an interview Wednesday, Biden’s deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “even if we drilled as much as we could, the price of oil is still set globally, by demand and supply conditions. And much of that supply is controlled by tyrants like Putin.”
Republicans say Biden is flat wrong, contending the president is either being disingenuous or does not know what he’s talking about.
They point in particular to Biden’s cancellation of the permit for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline that would, if built, swiftly transport oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. Republicans say approving construction of the pipeline would ease oil prices on futures markets and ensure more domestic capacity long-term and less reliance on imports, for instance, from Russia.
Republicans argue Biden’s energy agenda, which favors renewables and hopes to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels generally, is discouraging domestic exploration and production of oil and natural gas. An immediate switch to regulatory policies that favored fossil fuels would solve the supply issues caused by banning Russian energy imports and put downward pressure on gas prices, Republicans say.
“Yes, oil is an international market, but the main reason Americans are paying so much is bad domestic policies. These aren’t Putin’s price hikes. They’re President Biden’s,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday during a news conference. “And yes, Mr. President, your policies are holding back domestic energy production.”
Some Democrats have speculated that the Republicans’ strong support for prohibiting Russian energy imports to pressure Putin to withdraw from Ukraine amount to nothing more than a bait-and-switch. Now that Biden has complied, Republicans are blaming the president for the resulting higher gas prices, and that was the plan all along, some on the Left believe.
But Republicans were not alone in supporting a ban on Russian energy.
By the time Biden backed the policy on Tuesday morning, Democrats on Capitol Hill were moving legislation to force the administration’s hand. And now some Democrats are joining with Republicans to demand increases in domestic energy exploration and production to alleviate the pain at the pump, although they tend to put the onus on the private sector, rather than Biden, to facilitate an increase in American supplies.
In an interview with WGIR radio host Chris Ryan, vulnerable Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire called for a holistic approach to lowering gas prices.
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She voiced support for a gas-tax “holiday,” releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and investing taxpayer dollars in developing alternative energy sources. But Hassan emphasized that the solution to high gas prices would be incomplete without an increase in domestic production. To that end, the senator proposed pressuring “big oil” to exhaust their existing drilling permits to extract more oil from the earth inside the United States.
“We’ve got to stand up to big oil and really, uh, tell them that they need to start increasing production. There are thousands of unused permits in this country,” Hassan said. “We are the largest producer of gas and oil in the world. We can do that.”
Christian Datoc contributed to this report.
