On his first day in office, President Biden launched a war on American energy. And Minnesotans and all Americans have been paying higher energy and gas prices every since.
Our friends at the Foundation for Government Accountability put together a brief report on how Biden’s end-around executive orders are circumventing Congress and costing all Americans at the gas pumps and in their energy bills. Of course, higher energy costs usually means a higher cost-of-living for all.
After failing to get the president’s radical “green” agenda through Congress, the White House declared that “since Congress is not going to act on this emergency, then [President Biden] will.”
The result is record-high inflation – the highest in 40 years in fact – and skyrocketing consumer costs.
President Biden is using regulatory tactics to undermine America’s energy industry by:
- Banning, restricting, delaying, cancelling, and otherwise inhibiting domestic oil and gas drilling, permitting, and leasing (E.O. 14008)
- Choking off the oil and gas industry’s access to capital through new mandatory “environmental, social, and governance” schemes in Americans’ retirement plans, a new “Climate Risk Unit” for commodities, and climate risk memorandums for large banks (86 FR 57272 & 87 FR 29059)
- Incorporating “social costs” of greenhouse gases in decisions about future oil and gas leases
- Raising the “risk” of the federal government working with oil and gas industries
- Increasing already stringent new vehicle emissions standards (E.O. 14037)
- Rejoining the ill-conceived and possibly unconstitutional Paris Climate Agreement (E.O. 14008)
- Imposing restrictive new energy building codes (June 2022 Fact Sheet ‘Biden-Harris Administration Launches New Building Codes Initiative)
- Launching a litany of “environmental justice” initiatives
- Reducing availability of public lands for drilling through “monument” designations (E.O. 13990)
Congress should learn from states’ regulatory reform and check the runaway regulatory power of the president be requiring costly regulations, guidance, and other agency actions to receive congressional approval before taking effect.
