From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

With inflationary costs reaching a 40-year high under the Biden-Harris administration, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others in their administration have repeatedly blamed businesses, livestock producers, grocery stores, oil and natural gas companies and others for high prices.

At the same time, a record number of businesses closed, declared bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, citing high inflationary costs. In a recent report, nearly half of all small businesses said they won’t survive a second Harris term, higher costs and increased taxes, The Center Square reported.

Despite this, Harris says she plans to implement price controls, increase taxes on businesses and allow the 2017 tax cuts to expire, creating a $6 trillion chasm between her plan and former President Donald Trump’s, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As Americans struggled with increased grocery costs, including the high cost of meat, producers were faced with higher fuel, feed, grain and hay costs, driving up their operational costs that were passed onto consumers, according to multiple reports. In response, in 2021, the White House National Economic Council blamed high meat prices on “dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce disagrees, arguing that market concentration in the meat packing industry had been virtually unchanged for 25 years at the time. It then asked “if high prices are the result of corporate greed, why did these ‘greedy’ companies wait two decades to raise prices?” It clarified that increased meat prices were driven by supply and demand and overall inflation, largely created by increased federal spending and debt.

With costs increasing across the board, some companies adjusted by selling less product for more, referred to as shrinkflation, The Center Square first reported in 2022. However, Biden and Harris blamed companies for higher costs, reportedly in response to Democratic operatives advising them to do so, The​ Washington Post reported.

“What we said is, ‘You need a villain or an explanation for this. If you don’t provide one, voters will fill one in. The right is providing an explanation, which is that you’re spending too much,’” one Democratic operative told the Post. “That point finally became convincing to people in the White House.”

“And thus began the effort to wrongly blame employers for high prices,” the chamber’s executive vice president Neil Bradley said in a report identifying examples of the White House “wrongly blaming businesses for high prices.”

Also in 2022, Biden publicly blamed container companies for high shipping costs. News reports pointed to supply chain issues impacted by worker shortages, changes in customer spending that resulted in more cargo arriving in ports that the ports couldn’t handle, and port fines and fees contributing to higher costs.

The chamber notes that increased prices “resulted from consumers shifting their spending from services to goods” during the COVID-lockdown era, causing increased cargo demand. “Increased demand created backlogs at the ports, raising prices even higher. As supply and demand normalized, prices fell.”

By 2023, the president again publicly blamed the U.S. oil and natural gas industry for gas prices reaching a seven-year high. This was after he took more than 200 actions against the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, U.S. House Democrats introduced a bill that would have added a 50% per barrel tax, and the U.S. Treasury Department proposed a $110 billion tax hike on the industry, The Center Square reported.

But the industry doesn’t control the market, it’s subject to it like everyone else, Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association President Ed Longanecker said. The Biden-Harris administration could have lowered costs by expediting permits, lifting the federal leasing ban and creating “a more stable regulatory environment that provides certainty to producers and investors,” he told The Center Square. “Overburdensome regulations, increased taxes and anti-oil and natural gas rhetoric” exacerbated high energy prices and raised consumer costs, he said.

The administration has also repeatedly sued the industry and Texas, which leads U.S. production, exports and energy creation. In response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has aggressively fought to protect the Texas industry from Biden policies, the governor argues.

Also in 2023, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers said grocery sector profit margins “were elevated” and needed to “pass-through” to consumers. Earlier this year, Biden again claimed, “there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.”

The chamber refutes these claims, pointing to federal data, arguing that “higher grocery prices are a result of inflationary pressure across the supply chain and basic supply and demand dynamics,” explained by Department of Agriculture and Government Accountability Office economists.

Biden and Harris blaming businesses for high prices is “entirely backward,” Bradley says. “The truth is the Administration’s own fiscal and regulatory policies are driving inflation, and the American consumer is left holding the bag.”

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Carla Sands

President Dwight Eisenhower once declared that “pessimism never won any battle.” Yet, many Americans are understandably pessimistic these days.

Families are worried about how to put gas in the tank and food on the table. Most Americans feel that the American Dream is out of reach. As our nation faces mounting challenges, our leaders need to offer a positive vision for our future that Americans can believe in.

The United States is blessed with vast energy resources that can power our economy with affordable, reliable energy. Getting the government out of the way is a good place to start unleashing American energy in a way that will reverberate throughout the economy. This is key to bringing the American Dream back within reach.

Unfortunately, today’s reality is that the Left’s apocalyptic vision of a climate crisis is the kind of pessimism that loses battles. The Biden-Harris administration’s whole-of-government war on energy perpetuates a very bleak vision of our nation’s future.

As the United States regulates hydrocarbon production out of business, our manufacturing jobs move abroad and we become reliant on foreign sources of energy. This not only harms our economic and national security, but these foreign sources also fail to meet our stringent environmental standards for production at home.

Instead of producing abundant American energy, we look to OPEC+ for hydrocarbons and increase our dependence on China for needed critical mineral production. Meanwhile, China emits more greenhouse gasses than all developed nations combined.

The Paris Agreement, which President Joe Biden rejoined, has the United States pay Beijing, even as they continue to increase emissions. At home, American standards of living move backward; the government limits everything from what kind of car we can drive to what kind of stove we can cook on. Air-conditioning and air travel become accessible only to the rich.

This is a far cry from delivering the American Dream and is unpopular with voters. As a result, Vice President Kamala Harris has recently pursued an energy messaging strategy that Reuters has kindly termed “strategically ambiguous” and The Washington Post has deemed “climate silence.”

To those paying attention, the Democrat nominee’s “climate silence” is a deafening contrast to her unambiguous record of commitment to radical climate policies throughout her career.

As a senator, Harris advanced a $10 trillion Green New Deal and even supported removing the filibuster to pass it. As a 2020 presidential candidate, she proudly declared her opposition to fracking. Her current campaign disavowed this position but has failed to explain this shift. When asked in her one sit-down interview, Vice President Harris continued her strategic ambiguity, noting only that her “values haven’t changed.”

And despite public flip-flopping, her record as vice president bolsters the conclusion that her anti-energy bent is consistent. As vice president, she holds a critical role in this administration’s whole-of-government war on energy. She was the tie-breaking vote on the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which supercharged inflation to give “green” handouts to corporations and pet projects. Yet her nomination acceptance speech failed to mention energy at all and mentioned climate only once in passing. This is a telling omission from the Democrat nominee.

There is a clear logic to hiding the ball as she seeks to appeal to both energy voters in Pennsylvania and her radical climate base. Further, as the Washington Post observed, Vice President Harris’s climate policies contrast with the desire “to paint a rosy picture of the future.”

The Post is correct in calling this pessimistic vision a “lose-lose” messaging issue.

This is because, at its heart, this is a lose-lose policy proposition.

Fortunately, there is a win-win policy that offers both prosperity and environmental protection. We must unleash American energy and allow all energy sources to compete on a level playing field. We must remove burdensome government barriers and allow American ingenuity and free-market principles to drive innovation.

This is positive policy with a proven track record.

In 2019, building on the incredible innovations of the shale revolution and the pro-energy policies of the Trump administration, the United States became a net energy exporter for the first time in nearly 70 years. At the same time, this country had the largest net reduction of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Throughout the Trump administration, the United States also reduced air pollution by 7%.

American energy means we can liberate ourselves and our allies from depending on nations like Russia and China. We can protect the environment and improve the lives of Americans.

Put simply, an America First approach to energy means we can embrace the spirit of the American Dream.

This is a realistic policy vision that also paints a brighter picture of our future. Americans deserve clarity, not ambiguity. They deserve the opportunity to achieve the American Dream, starting with energy freedom.

Carla Sands is a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark. She currently serves as vice chair of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute.