Biden Would Prefer You Forget His First Year in Office

January 25, 2022

Birthdays and anniversaries are typically celebratory events, but when the occasion is marking President Joe Biden’s first year in office, the mood is less than festive. Biden’s first year in office has been marked by pandemic lockdowns, foreign policy failures and dramatic increases in inflation. When it comes to energy policies, Biden’s term has been focused on making it more difficult for the United States to access reliable, affordable sources of fuel leading to spikes in energy costs.

In a piece published in Townhall today, PTF Communications Director Larry Behrens takes us step-by-step through some of the Biden administration’s energy failures over the past twelve months:

Biden’s anniversary is also the one-year mark of his cancellation of the Keystone pipeline. That’s right, Joe Biden felt shutting down this critical infrastructure was so important, he decided to do it on his very first day. One year later, Americans who lost their job are still waiting for the always “just around the corner” green jobs that never seem to arrive. At the same time, everyone is paying more for everything we buy. This is the cost of losing American energy independence in a single year.  

President Biden thought canceling Keystone XL was such a priority that he did it on the first day, but then his administration spent the ensuing months denying any responsibility for rising gas prices – even as they asked others to increase production. As Behrens reminds us here:

The evolution of President Biden’s failure to defend his role in rising gas prices took an odd turn in July. Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki told us there is simply a “misunderstanding” in what causes prices to go up, but we all can rest easy because “we’re working on it.” Roughly a month later, Biden would run to OPEC countries and beg them to produce more oil. Apparently, “we’re working on it” means the same President who shut down Keystone but approved Putin’s pipeline was now begging a group nations, including Russia, to produce more oil.

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In his anniversary press conference, the President said that some of us could be paying $5 for a gallon of gas and noted, “It’s going to be very hard.” What he failed to mention was during Biden’s first year, American oil production was down 260,000 barrels a day. Stated more clearly, as many states reopened in 2021 from the lows of 2020, Joe Biden’s policies delivered less oil than during the worst of the pandemic.

While anniversaries are usually a time to reminisce and remember, make no mistake that when it comes to energy, President Biden would prefer that Americans forget what his first year has brought them.