Something is happening that Republicans eyeing the fall elections don’t like: Hiring remains strong and gas prices are falling.
I’m not saying they’re against a strong job market and lower gas prices; they’d just rather take credit for it themselves. Anyway, this is what House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted on Friday, July 8, 2022, when the June jobs report was released, and following 25 straight days of gas price declines (see story here):
This is baloney; Biden is issuing more drilling permits than Trump did, and environment-conscious Democrats don’t like it (see story here).
The reality is that high gas prices were caused by low gas prices. Years of weak profits forced oil companies to cut investments in production. That’s why oil companies were already sitting on over 9,000 unused drilling permits when Biden issued more to them (this has been fact-checked here).
But as the fact-checker pointed out, there are business reasons why oil companies aren’t using those permits — and all of them are beyond Biden’s, or any other president’s, control. That means if voters replace Democrats with Republicans, they can’t do anything about it either.
As for “sending our emergency reserves to China,” the rightwing media are blurting all over the place that Biden “sent 5 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to our arch-enemy, China.” The facts are he released some oil from the SPR to ease the shortage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some of that oil was sold into international markets, including 1 million (not 5 million) barrels to China (see story here).
The explanation? That story says, “administration officials … insist that they can’t control what private companies do, and the oil that went overseas appears to be a small fraction of the total released from the national reserve thus far. Some conservatives conceded the point – at least in part. ‘Once oil is released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, current U.S. law allows for companies that are registered to purchase it to then sell it on the market, including to adversaries like China,’ said Heritage Foundation energy analyst Jack Spencer.”
Again, it’s not a decision Biden made, nor one within his control. His only decision was to release the SPR oil into the market. Saying he “sent it to China,” like saying he’s “made it harder to produce oil here at home,” is a lie.