“Senior White House aides are exploring new ideas to respond to high gas prices,” informs The Washington Post, “desperate to show that the administration is trying to address voter frustration about rising costs at the pump.”
Not “desperate” to lower gas prices, mind you — which have hit $5 a gallon, a double-digit increase from last month — but to “address” the resulting “voter frustration” from high prices.
After all, there’s an election in November. Suddenly, this crisis could affect important people in Washington!
“Biden officials are taking a second look at whether the federal government could send rebate cards out to millions of American drivers to help them pay at gas stations,” The Post reports. This generous brainstorm was previously rejected because “shortages in the U.S. chip industry would make it hard to produce enough rebate cards.”
America 2022 isn’t even technologically capable of giving money away.
Administration experts also worried “the idea could backfire by further pushing up prices by adding to consumer demand.” Oh, didn’t Congress repeal the laws of supply and demand?
Someone “familiar with internal administration discussions” offered that the administration was looking at “telling governors to lower or waive their gas taxes.”
Grover Norquist smiles.
“Other proposals floated by policy experts include suspending the Jones Act,” notes The Post story, “which would reduce shipping costs and make it cheaper to get gasoline from the Gulf Coast to the Eastern Seaboard.”
That act should have been repealed years ago.
“They’re fighting about narrative rather than fighting about substance,” offered an unnamed outside economic adviser, “because realistically, what are they going to do?”
They could open up energy markets, of course — approve gas pipelines rather than blocking them, perhaps.
Could? Should? Yes. Will?
Not Biden!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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