Leading Republican voices spent much of 2023 falsely telling the public that the Biden administration had dramatically curtailed energy production in the United States. So far in 2024, we’re seeing more of the same.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, declared on social media roughly 24 hours ago that President Joe Biden “destroyed American energy independence” in order to “satisfy the climate cultists.” This was utterly absurd, though the Georgia Republican was echoing a similar message, published a few hours earlier, from Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn. The Tennessean wrote:
“Joe Biden has destroyed U.S. energy independence — gas prices remain skyhigh [sic] and our dependence on foreign countries for oil only strengthens our adversaries. [Donald Trump] will restore U.S. energy dominance.”
So, a couple of things.
First, gas prices are not sky high. After collapsing in the spring of 2020 — during the recession caused by the pandemic — and then spiking in June 2022, prices have recently retreated to where they were a few years ago.
Second, the idea that the White House has “destroyed U.S. energy independence” is demonstrably ridiculous. As The Washington Post reported on New Year’s Eve:
You won’t hear President Biden talking about it much, but a key record has been broken during his watch: The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. The flow of huge amounts of crude from American producers is playing a big role in keeping prices down at the pump, diminishing the geopolitical power of OPEC and taming inflation.
The Democratic president doesn’t emphasize this much, in large part because the robust Biden-era energy production is in conflict with the White House’s climate agenda. Republicans, meanwhile, don’t emphasize it, either, because the truth is at odds with the deceptive message they want voters to believe.
And so the conversation continues in a mind-numbing sort of way in which reality is completely ignored. Oil and natural gas production in the United States recently reached all-time highs, and this is apparently a well-kept secret that neither party is eager to advertise.
Blackburn’s rhetoric about Trump “restoring U.S. energy dominance” notwithstanding, domestic oil production is actually higher now, under Biden, than when Trump was in office. Politico published a report over the summer on the subject with a memorable headline: “The U.S. is pumping oil faster than ever. Republicans don’t care.” In context, it isn’t that Republicans are indifferent to increased energy production; it’s that Republicans don’t care that their rhetoric is false. The Post’s Catherine Rampell added in a recent column: “If ‘energy independence’ means exporting more than you import, we’ve achieved it in spades. The United States has been exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports for 22 straight months now, far longer than was the case under Trump. If this is what waging war on fossil fuels looks like, Democrats apparently aren’t very good at it.” This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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