Biden can take a bow for rising gas prices. He did that!

By Jon Gabriel

I didn’t use to dread pulling up to the gas pump. Now I’d rather ask my dentist for an elective root canal.

As I dumped 60 bucks into my mid-size sedan, I noticed someone had slapped one of those Biden stickers on the pump, pointing at the price and saying “I did that.”

Gas station attendants probably spend a couple hours every day scraping those off.

When President Biden took office, the national average price of regular gas was $2.38 per gallon.

Today, it's $4.25, a 79% increase. He has repeatedly explained that this has nothing to do with his brilliant policies. It’s everyone else’s fault.

First blame virus, then greedy oil titans

Last May, the soaring costs were blamed on the “end of Covid,” even though the pandemic didn’t end. The price was $2.96 per gallon.

Move forward to November and the rise of omicron. At that time, the White House blamed greedy oil companies.

Biden demanded the Federal Trade Commission investigate the outlandish price of $3.41 per gallon. The FTC never found any conspiracies.

Today, the pain at the pump is worse than ever -- but it’s Russia’s fault. "I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home," Biden said in a Tuesday tweet.

The buck stops at the Kremlin, and good luck voting Vladimir Putin out.

Biden, take a bow for rising gas prices

Instead of pushing the blame on everyone else, perhaps Biden should look closer to home.

On his first day in office, the president canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and suspended new federal oil and gas leases. He followed those moves by hiking the drilling fees on federal land, mandating that all federal vehicles be zero emission and is considering shutting down a second pipeline from Canada, the L5.

None of this was a surprise. Biden bragged about his anti-energy campaign during the presidential campaign.

"No more drilling including offshore,” Biden said during a 2020 primary debate. “No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. It ends."

Actions have consequences; high gas prices are the predictable result.

After banning Russian oil, Biden hasn’t quite figured out how to replace it. In a little over a year, America went from energy independence to buying about 10 percent of our fuel from Putin.

Now going hat in hand to other tyrants

After funding the Kremlin’s war machine, he’s now begging the autocrats running Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to put more oil on the market. Let’s hope their expansionist aims aren’t as intense.

For some reason, it’s “green” to drill oil in the Middle East and ship it halfway around the world instead of just drilling for it here or in Canada under strict environmental rules. Must be the same reason it’s ecofriendly to ship oil on trains and trucks instead of through a pipeline.

The president announced a plan to reopen the strategic petroleum reserve, which won’t move the needle much. Aside from that, his administration suggests we buy electric vehicles.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg enthused that families who buy electric vehicles "never have to worry about gas prices again."

I don’t have $50,000 lying around but maybe I’ll buy a few lottery tickets.

“We're working through an energy transition,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, The reality is we have to take some time and get off of oil and gas.” Granholm also insisted we must “do everything we possibly can to keep fossil fuel energy in the ground.”

Are none of our leaders aware midterm elections are in nine months?

By then, we might look upon today as the “good old days.” Gas prices are predicted to keep rising, along with our grocery bills and the ticket prices of electric cars.

We can blame Putin for a host of evils in the world. When it comes to our pocketbooks, the blame lands squarely on President Biden.

Jon Gabriel, a Mesa resident, is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Republic and azcentral.com. Follow him on Twitter at @exjon.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The president played a key role in the rising cost of gas