The Whitewash House is claiming credit for “gas prices going down 44 days in a row.”

Amazingly, the Biden-Harris regime is trying to get away with claiming that it deserves political points for fuel pump price drops this midsummer, in the desperate hope that it will blunt some of the election backlash the Democratic Party rightly deserves this fall.

Their claim is unjust for a host of reasons.

Nationally averaged gas prices always drop a bit in June and July. This happens because gas prices always spike nationally in May, because of the costly annual EPA-mandated switch to the summer blends in our overregulated big cities. The slight drops we have seen in recent weeks are therefore just a matter of the marketplace completing its annual adjustments after that costly artificial changeover. Your pump price remains more than double what you were paying when President Trump was in office.

If we really wanted to help the country, long-term, we would stop mandating these micromanaged fuel blends entirely. But as long as this ongoing mandate remains, we will see late spring spikes and midsummer reductions. This is nothing for which the Biden-Harris regime can take credit.

The next thing to look at is diesel fuel. Both gasoline and diesel come from the same original raw material: petroleum. If the regime were really doing anything to reduce prices, then both would be going down, wouldn’t they? But no, diesel remains at record highs. Not only do some passenger vehicles run on diesel, but almost all commercial transportation vehicles depend on it.

One of the key drivers of the current inflation crisis is the fact that it costs twice as much to transport things as it used to, both cross-town and cross-country alike… and the primary driver of that transportation inflation is the cost of diesel fuel. The national average diesel prices are calculated, tracked, and published weekly by the Department of Energy, in a completely objective manner, and anyone can check them, anytime they want, at Atlas.DOE.gov. If there were anything for the Biden-Harris regime to take credit for, the data would be before our eyes. But there is no good news there.

The simple fact is, even the most cursory review of both political posturing and public policy over the past two years reveals the truth: our high fuel prices are intentional, having been literally promised by the delusional politicians of the Left, to satisfy the demented desires of their base.

In 2020, the Biden-Harris campaign promised a crackdown on petroleum production and use that would result in huge price increases, and they have delivered. A combination of executive orders, departmental policy changes, and congressional action had the desired effect immediately, 18 months ago.

The federal government stopped authorizing drilling in many areas completely controlled by the federal government, and simultaneously began to terribly slow-walk permits for activity on land not completely controlled by the federal government. Even private drilling has therefore been severely incapacitated, by this intentional slowdown in the permit process.

This has had two logical results: first, the immediate reduction in production and transportation of petroleum, and second, the tragic but natural movement away from continued exploration and preparation by the oil companies here in the United States.

Just like any other industry, the oil industry takes time to prepare to produce its product.

Just as a movie to be released in the theaters this Friday required first a script to be written, then a cast and crew to be hired, then sets to be secured and prepared, and finally the production to be filmed, so it is too with fuel:  gasoline does not magically appear in a gas station the second you need it to fill your tank.

First, the land must be scouted and identified for its potential, then the rights to drill must be secured, equipment must be put in place, staff must be hired, transportation must be arranged. You don’t start any of that process if there is doubt at the end that the government will allow you to go forward.

The oil companies have therefore accepted reality: they acknowledge what current federal policy means to them, like it or not.

Seeing that this government will not allow them to produce in America, they are abandoning ongoing efforts to do so. What would be the point? For the time being, the oil industry is putting its energy into drilling in other countries with more rational, supportive governments. That means hiring people in other countries, developing production and building infrastructure in other countries, strengthening the economies of other countries.

Yes, you read that right: that’s what the Biden-Harris regime is doing. It’s not only crippling the United States, intentionally. It is also boosting the development of other countries -- some of them our rivals or outright enemies -- quite purposefully and maliciously.

Why?

Because a misguided cult has decided that carbon dioxide, the food of all plant life, must suddenly be decreed an imagined hazard? Because they were raised as Luddites, fearing the wonderful standard of living that petroleum has brought to the modern age? Or perhaps because their crazed desire for equality of result has committed them to the goal of pulling down the United States to a lowest common denominator, Third World style civilization, level with all of the worst economies on earth?

We can ponder the reasons all we want… And we will likely find that there are many politicians and activists who fall in each of these separate camps.

In the end, what really matters is that they must be defeated -- that their ongoing efforts to destroy the American economy must be terminated while we still have an economy to save.

And yes, it all begins with accepting and embracing reality: With calling out the regime’s lies, with correcting the public record, and with simply refusing to let them get away with such ridiculous claims as the idea that a malicious regime, one that first tripled fuel prices in 18 months, should get credit for when gas prices drop just a little, from that outrageous trebling to a “mere” doubling of the prices that they inherited.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional.  A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.

Image: Ben Lunsford