Biden’s Easter Weekend News Dump

April 18, 2022

Late in the afternoon on Good Friday, the Biden administration quietly executed what’s known as a news dump. An attempt to get as little attention as possible for something they feel is unpopular with their base. The issue at the heart of the news dump: a press release that claims the Biden administration is planning to restart oil and gas leasing this week. Biden and his surrogates claim this action will help lower gas prices for the American people. What the press release left out was the fact that this action would be the bare minimum, and the administration is required by law to conduct these lease sales, and they have yet to.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes, “Energy companies threatened to seek another judicial order to compel Interior to hold an onshore lease sale this spring. Interior’s Friday announcement is an attempt to head off that effort. It says it will hold a sale for 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres of land. This is doing the least possible to comply with Judge Doughty’s ruling last summer.

“This is two-thirds less land than the average during the Trump Presidency. Interior says it is ‘prioritizing the American people’s broad interests in public lands,’ but the sale amounts to a mere 0.00589% of federal land. Americans have a significant interest in more domestic energy production. They don’t want to keep paying more than $4 a gallon for gasoline.”

At the same time, the Biden administration is also jacking up the royalty rate for oil and gas producers. How is making producing American energy more expensive supposed to lower costs for struggling American families?

The Journal continues, “Interior also plans to increase the federal royalty rate for the first time to 18.75% from 12.5%…But the federal rate has long been lower in order to compensate for the more onerous federal permitting process.”

This is not an attempt to lower energy prices. It’s an attempt to do the bare minimum and shift blame.

Power The Future Communications Director Larry Behrens blasted the Biden administration’s move. “There is a reason this announcement came just before the Easter holiday: it is another band aid that won’t stop the bleeding from Joe Biden’s self-inflicted wound. This latest offering is an 80 percent reduction in available land coupled with a new oil tax thrown at producers to try and escape blame for soaring gas prices. When these policy peanuts offered by Washington don’t turn around massive gas prices or 40-year high inflation, the President will again try to blame energy workers for not producing enough. You don’t reclaim American energy independence by giving only 20 percent, and America’s struggling families will continue to pay the price for Biden’s latest political stunt.”

Instead of holiday news dumps, the Biden administration should dump its catastrophic energy policies that are resulting in skyrocketing gas prices and hurting the American people.