Wednesday's Energy Absurdity: Biden Offers Another Non-Solution to High Gas Prices

Wednesday's Energy Absurdity of the Day: Biden Offers Another Non-Solution to High Gas Prices.

[Follow me on Twitter at @EnergyAbsurdity]

In a move that will likely surprise no one, Joe Biden will urge congress today to suspend the federal gasoline tax for 3 months, starting July 1 and ending September 30, a month before Election Day. It’s the same day his program to take 1 million barrels of oil each day from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve comes to an end. You are all supposed to believe that he proximity to the November elections is mere coincidence, and if you do believe that, you might just be naïve.

Here’s an excerpt from a story at the Washington Examiner:

President Joe Biden will implore Congress to suspend federal gas and diesel taxes for the three months ending September amid record-high prices at the pump and record-low approval ratings before November's midterm elections.

Biden will make the pitch to lawmakers in remarks Wednesday, although senior administration officials concede it "alone won't fix the problem we face, but it will provide families a little breathing room."

[End]

Well, no, it won’t “fix the problem we face” or even come close. It might help buy Democrat candidates some votes in November, and lord knows Democrats are all about buying votes with someone else’s money.

Like the SPR withdrawal program, suspending the gas tax of 18.4 Cents per gallon is a really bad idea that will save consumers a rounding error on the current $5 per gallon gas prices and deprive the already-underfunded Federal Highway Trust Fund of needed revenues. This is a tax that was originally created to fund improvements and maintenance of the federal highway system, but that has not seen an increase in 30 years now, due to the serial political posturing by 5 different presidents and 15 different congresses.

And now the current president, seeing his approval ratings continuing to plummet and a “red wave” election about to subsume his party wants to make the problem even worse in the hopes of preserving a Democrat seat or two in the House come November. That’s what this is all about, and anyone who contends otherwise is too naïve to be taken seriously.

That is all.