Biden Is Half Right On Energy — But What About The Other Half?

Written by Virginia Kruta, columnist at The Daily Wire

President Joe Biden finally sanctioned Russia’s energy sector, and the question remains as to whether he will do the right thing or the politically expedient thing in the aftermath.
The right thing, obviously, is to get the layers and layers of bureaucracy out of the way of America’s energy sector. Open the approval process for more leases. Restart construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Maybe even offer incentives to oil companies that drill more instead of taxing them out of business. Essentially, stop doing things at the government level and let the American people do what they do: fix the problem at hand.
The politically expedient thing is to continue worshipping at the altar of green energy. I know that sounds a bit off because it will likely cost Biden the midterms and possibly the presidency in 2024, but roll with me on this. Biden is likely to lose those things regardless — the only political expediency he can afford to care about is more immediate even than November: it’s now. And now, with razor-thin margins of power in both the House and the Senate, Biden cannot afford to piss off the far left in his own party — the climate alarmists who will absolutely throw a “fine, I won’t vote for anything you do” tantrum if he takes up the Sarah Palin mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
The former choice may not lower the price at the pump — particularly not immediately — but it will slow the climb dramatically and could eventually cause it to plateau. The latter choice will only cause gas prices to spike faster and higher, making December’s inflation report look like the warm-up act. And the real casualties will be the industries that are only just beginning to come back from pandemic-related forced closures. Restaurants? If you can’t afford the gas to get to and from work, you’re not dining out. Hotels? Get real. Who’s going to road trip (or fly) anywhere?
But while Biden did the right thing in cutting off funding to Russia via their energy sector, it’s important to also remember that a lot of people did a lot of wrong things first. While the White House encouraged private corporations to cut off business in Russia, some did. Visa, MasterCard, Netflix, even Starbucks. Twitch stopped paying Russian streamers for their content. But none of those things punished Putin or had any impact on his ability to wage war. Those things only hurt the Russian people — and as I’ve said many times, the first people Putin oppressed were his own. They are not the enemy, and it’s important to remember that.