Democrats Seize On Iran War To Lie About Energy Costs

fawning Times article is based on a report from “top Senate Democrats” that “accused the Trump administration of waging a ‘war on energy affordability’ by canceling hundreds of clean energy projects even before the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran — strikes which have sent energy costs higher.”

But the Times conveniently leaves out the facts, because those would bulldoze the Democrats’ talking points.

For example, Democrats and the mainstream press have been screaming about the price of crude oil since the attacks on Iran started. While oil prices did rise sharply, they are still well below the peaks they reached under Joe Biden — peaks that would have been higher still had Biden not been draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to hold them down. (The current price is also below where it was almost the entire time Barack Obama was president.)

Gasoline prices tell the same story. Yes, they’ve gone up recently, but they are nowhere near as high as they reached under Biden. And once the Iran conflict is settled, they will come right back down.

How about energy prices overall? They shot up under Biden, and have flattened or declined under Trump. Here are the Consumer Price Index for total energy, electricity, and gasoline.

Have they come down as much as we’d like since Trump took office? No. But the facts don’t support any of the Democrats’ claims about Trump’s energy policy.

Then there are the claims about “clean” energy in that report that are demonstrably false.

At one point, for example, it says that “Trump’s rotten legislation raised taxes on solar, wind, and battery projects, which are the most affordable sources of electricity.”

Yet, the more heavily a state relies on “clean energy,” the higher its electricity costs, as a detailed report from the Heritage Foundation made clear.

That’s true internationally as well. Energy prices track “clean energy” usage almost perfectly, as data from the International Energy Agency show.

How about at the state level? Again, you see that Democrats, not Trump, are the villains when it comes to energy affordability.

Only one of the 10 states with the highest electricity costs is run by Republicans. And only one of the 10 states with the lowest electricity costs is run by Democrats.

Of the 10 states with the highest gasoline prices, only three are solidly Republican, but only one of the states with the lowest gas prices is heavily Democratic.

When it comes to affordability, we will take Donald Trump’s energy policies over the Democrats’ every time. So should every American who cares about access to reliable, low-cost energy.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board