(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) A befuddled President Joe Biden on Monday contradicted both reality and his own Treasury Department, boasting about his self-proclaimed success in lowering gas prices and claiming that his administration is making steady progress on tackling inflation, even as American consumers continue to struggle with high food prices.
“The price of gas, when we said what I was doing wouldn’t make any difference, well guess what, it’s down $1.30 since the start of the summer,” Biden dissembled over gas prices during a speech at Boston Logan International Airport.
The national average price of gas is still more than $1 higher than it was when Biden took office and started his aggressive war on energy independence.
Biden’s pronouncement came one day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that gas prices are likely to skyrocket this winter to near previous highs. With the European Union halting most Russian oil purchases and banning Russia from shipping oil by tanker, she said, prices are expected to increase significantly.
“It is possible that that could cause a spike in oil prices,” Yellen told CNN on Sunday.
While Yellen laid preemptive cover for the Biden administration by again blaming the Russia/Ukraine war for high gas prices, she kept mum on the dirty little secret that will almost assuredly send gas prices higher after the midterms.
That’s when the aftershocks of ending Biden’s big drain on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will likely hit the market, industry experts warned.
“Next month the draw on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve comes to an end,” noted one energy economist. “Shocking how many people can’t comprehend the basic math.”
Next month the draw on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve comes to an end.
Shocking how many people can’t comprehend the basic math.
12% of USA oil supply has been coming from inventory.
That’s ending.#oott #ongt #SPR #oil #crudeoil #inflation
— Brad / vivere militare est (@LNGeconomist) September 12, 2022
Biden has tapped the SPR to historically dangerous levels to offer temporary respite from the $5-plus per-gallon gas prices his domestic policies triggered earlier this year. By the end of October, when the drawdown is set to expire, the SPR is expected to shrink to a 40-year low with inventories predicted at 358 million barrels, compared to 621 million barrels a year ago, according to the Institute of Energy Research.
When the latest reserve tap was announced in July, “Goldman Sachs revised its forecast for gasoline prices upward to $5 a gallon by the end of the year,” the Institute reported.
The Biden regime and Democrats across the board, in other words, are literally gaslighting consumers and voters with fabricated lower gas prices that they know will soar after the midterm elections.
“President Biden is tapping our Strategic Petroleum Reserve rather than ending his war on American energy,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., warned last November. “He is putting a Band-Aid on a wound he created.”
Biden has no desire to acknowledge the pain that will be felt when that Band-Aid is torn off, preferring instead to offer political platitudes that all is fine and getting better.
“The American people should have confidence that we’re on the right track, that we’re seeing real progress,” Biden said.
