The House Republicans are off to a good start, passing two energy bills that make a lot of sense. Two weeks ago, they passed the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act with a lopsided bipartisan vote of 331 to 97, whose content is self-evident.
Today, they passed the Strategic Production Response Act, which would tie any SPR sales to additional oil and gas leasing on federal lands. The vote was 221 to 205.
There are companion bills in the U.S. Senate and we will be speaking with Senator John Hoeven in a little while about all this. Hopefully, the next step will be a broad-based H.R. 1 permitting bill that will reopen fracking, pipelining, refining, LNG terminals and so forth.
This is all so important because refined petroleum products permeate virtually every nook and cranny of the American economy. Larger supplies will bring down prices and make it affordable for middle-class working folks. Of course, Joe Biden opposes all this.
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He’s happy to sell SPR reserves to China, wants to use this national security tool for short-term gasoline political price manipulation and cares not one whit that we’re still a million barrels a day short from where we were back in 2019 during the Trump energy independence era and speaking of Biden opposition to common-sense Republican legislation, the president and his allies continue to fear-monger and oppose any spending reduction that might come out of the debt ceiling discussion this summer.
He has said he’d meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but they haven’t set a date yet and he said that in that meeting he will not discuss any budget negotiations. In other words, he’s stone-walling, but the worst part of this story, is Mr. Biden’s use of the big lie.
I’ve said time and again that he is incapable of truth-telling on the economy particularly, but many other issues as well. Everything he says is remarkably left-wing partisan. He is the non-unifier. He barely even acknowledges that the Republicans won the House in the last election, but his worst sin of all is his constant harping that the Republicans want to slash social security, want to slash Medicare, and want to default on our government debt. This is simply NOT TRUE.
I have interviewed House leaders McCarthy and Scalise and asked them about this directly. Please take a listen:
LARRY: “There he goes again. He is saying the House Republicans want to crash into social security and Medicare and you’re going to default on the debt. So, I’m just going to ask you, is that true?”
SCALISE: “No, it’s not, Larry and most importantly Joe Biden knows it’s not true and he keeps saying it because he wants to scare the American people.”
LARRY: “They’re saying you’re going to cut social security, you’re going to cut Medicare and you’re going to default on the interest payments on the bonds.”
MCCARTHY: “None of that is true.”
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So, the Republican House leaders couldn’t be clearer and yet the president keeps saying it. Chuck Schumer keeps saying it. Hakeem Jeffries keeps saying it. Karine Jean-Pierre keeps saying it. So, just to lighten things up a bit, here’s Senator John Kennedy on the subject:
SEN JOHN KENNEDY: “President Biden says my party – I – want to gut social security and Medicare and Medicaid and that’s just not true. Not even George Santos would make up a whopper like that and the president knows that.”
Good for Senator Kennedy. Last night on Sean Hannity’s show, I put it this way:
LARRY KUDLOW: “Biden and Schumer and Jeffries, they’re all giving us this big lie. Here’s the big lie: the Republicans are going to cut into social security, the Republicans are going to cut Medicare, the Republicans are going to default on the debt. It is a complete lie. This is what authoritarians do, this is what totalitarians do. They say something that’s not true, they keep repeating it and they hope that somehow it’s gonna become true.”
Yes, this tactic is used by authoritarians and dictators since time immemorial and I will guarantee you, that Mr. Biden’s polls, which have been sinking because of his classified documents scandal, will sink even more with this kind of fearmongering.
From the crowd that pushed $6 trillion in new spending and borrowing in the last two years, where the economy in the past year grew by only 1% with the highest inflation rate in the last 40 years, they can’t even consider working with a new Congress to curb over-spending and debt creation.
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The public has way too much common sense. They do not want another bout of inflation and Steve Scalise said it well last night on our show, when he said Biden’s massive increase in social welfare benefits, without any work requirements is keeping people out of the labor force, and that is actually damaging the big entitlements because fewer people will have any resources to support and pay into social security and Medicare.
It’s brilliant insight by Mr. Scalise and I’ll add one more point. All this big government spending, borrowing, regulating and taxing is continuing the multi-decade trend of stagnant economic growth.
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The CBO just came out with a 10-year forecast of 1.5% annual growth. That would make the third consecutive decade of faltering American prosperity. We should be growing at 3.5% a year, as we did for over 50 years after World War II and if we were on that track, with a greatly limited government, we would be solving all of our budget and debt problems.
How about $3 of spending cuts for every new dollar of debt? Kevin Hassett is right. It’s just common sense and how about stopping the big lie? Save America. Stop the spending.