Enjoy the Modest Dip in Gas Prices While It Lasts

Commentary

“We’ve been working really hard to bring the price down,” a COVID-stricken President Joe Biden claimed regarding gasoline prices in a virtual meeting with some of his energy and economic aides on Friday. It begs the question: how hard did he and his team work to bring the price of gas up over his first year and a half in office?

According to Biden, “gas prices have fallen every day this summer for 38 days in a row. Now, you know, you can find gas for $3.99 or less in more than 30,000 gas stations in more than 35 states.” There are more than 145,000 gas stations in America, so he could have put this another way: nearly 80 percent of stations in the country are charging over $4 a gallon; when this president took office the average price was $2.39.

Gasoline can’t help but ripple out through the rest of the economy. Groceries, building materials, medical supplies, work or pleasure travel—there isn’t much of anything that doesn’t rely on a petroleum-powered vehicle to get from farm to table or factory to consumer. But this administration has been twisting itself into knots rationalizing the consumer pain of higher gas prices as a necessity to save the planet—before swiftly taking credit for any slight decline.

The president touted his release of a million barrels a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve beginning in the spring. Quite a bit of that actually ended up going to communist China, our primary global adversary, instead of the domestic destinations that were apparently intended. But that aside, wouldn’t someone dedicated to ending reliance on fossil fuels let all those hundreds of millions of barrels of oil sitting in underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas stay undisturbed? Especially when the supposed purpose is to lower gas