Gas prices hit another record high this week, with the average price for a gallon of gas hitting $4.59 in the Yellowhammer State.
With the high prices not only affecting drivers but also making life more difficult for farmers, some members of Congress are calling on President Joe Biden to do more.
Tuesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Mobile) said Biden had “no plan” to address high energy costs.
“I have yet to figure out what’s going on,” said Carl. “They have no plan. There’s nothing that tells me what their end game is. They just keep piling on and piling on and piling on, and I wish someone could explain it to me.”
The congressman said the high energy prices added to the cost of a lot of other goods, including the food we eat.
“The first person that hits is the farmer,” he said. “That’s where it’s going to hit the quickest and the hardest. Of course it’s got to trickle down, you’re going to pay more for your fruits and vegetables, and for your beef and pork and everything else.”
Earlier this year, Carl introduced the “Unleashing American Energy Act,” which would require more oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Alaska Region of the Outer Continental Shelf, as well as prohibit future moratoriums or delays on any other oil and gas leasing.
Carl said his bill would add much needed oil and gas supplies to the market, which in turn would lower prices at the pump.
“It opens back up our federal properties, our public properties that belong to all of us,” he explained. “And the drilling that we need to do, not just open the pipeline but the drilling also, and the fracking and the stuff that we’ve done, that’s what’s driven the prices down is the availability of the raw product.”
He argued that federal government intervention was directly responsible for the current high energy costs.
“Shutting down these bid processes and shutting down these oil fields on this property is driving the price up,” he argued. “I mean it’s doing just the opposite, and I said on natural resources, we try to explain this to our democrat friends and they don’t want to listen. They don’t care. They don’t care what the gas prices are.”
Carl also responded to those Democrats who have blamed greedy oil companies for the high prices.
“This is the go to that the Democratic party always has done to,” he said. “They always want to attack the producer, they always want to attack the business side. They don’t want to admit that they may have done something wrong.”
The congressman concluded that the evidence pointed to actions by the Biden administration being responsibly for increasing energy costs.
“Look at the facts, and the facts are very simple,” he exclaimed. “Fuel prices started up the moment Biden shutdown the first pipeline, that’s when it started. Fuel is based on futures, so what they’re buying today may be 90, 120 days out, so the whole industry’s got a very negative view on where the future’s going. That’s why the prices keep creeping up.”
Gas prices have DOUBLED since President Biden took office, and today we hit a new record high of $4.92 a gallon!
Why won’t Democrats allow any votes on bills like my Unleashing American Energy Act to bring fuel prices down?
— Rep. Jerry Carl (@RepJerryCarl) June 7, 2022
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
