Biden’s Handlers Want Skyrocketing Gas Prices. The EPA Just Revealed Why.

The Democrats are well aware of the old adage, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and are busy applying it as gas prices spiral out of all control.

As PJM’s Chris Queen discussed Monday, Transportation Secretary Pete “Mr. Mom” Buttigieg appeared to be fantastically out of touch when he responded to skyrocketing prices at the pump. “Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well,” asserted Buttigieg. “Last month, we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network so that people from rural to suburban to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.” It was a real “Let Them Eat Cake” moment for Secretary Pete, but there is a method to his madness: the administration isn’t just out of touch, it is actively trying to use this crisis to impose its green agenda. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Michael Regan confirmed that on Monday.

The Sacramento Bee reported that Regan was at the White House, along with Buttigieg and alleged Vice President Kamala Harris, to announce “proposed limits on new buses and large trucks to curb some of their greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% in the next decade.” In the course of his remarks, Regan boasted, “We’re pressing the accelerator to reach a zero-emissions future sooner than most people thought.”

Nothing presses the accelerator to reach a zero-emissions future more effectively than gas prices rising so high that driving a carbon-emitting car is simply too expensive.

At the Monday White House event, Harris was likewise enthusiastic, saying, “We are all in the midst of a turning point. We have the technology to transition to a zero-emission fleet. We can address the climate crisis and grow our economy at the same time.”

We are all in the midst of a turning point, and the green energy forces are not going to let it go to waste. On Tuesday, Old Joe Biden said that the situation was going to get worse, as prices are “gonna go up,” and that he couldn’t do anything about it. “Can’t do much right now. Russia’s responsible.” Biden also risibly claimed that “It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”

How is it possible that the president of the United States could be such a shameless liar and constantly get a pass for it from the establishment media? In lying so brazenly, Biden must know that no “journalist” will challenge him, and he must also have such a low opinion of the American people that he assumes most will not realize he is lying. On that score, he may be at least partially right: it’s likely many Americans don’t know that Biden promised, during a presidential debate, that he would “transition away from the oil industry.”

Old Joe delivered right away, shutting down the Keystone Pipeline, placing a moratorium on oil leases on federal property (which was blocked in court but is apparently still followed in the Interior Department, as the number of drilling permits it has issued has dropped sharply), suspending some existing drilling leases, restricting fracking, placing onerous financial regulations on the oil industry, and more. Now, his handlers have made it clear that they have no intention of revisiting any of this, but instead are looking into buying oil from tyrannical rogue states such as Venezuela and Iran.

It looks as if Biden’s handlers will do anything but relieve the plight of the American people, the plight that they themselves created. If they did ease up on their restrictions on the domestic oil industry and restart work on the Keystone Pipeline, they would face the wrath of the far-Left greens who constitute the great bulk of their base, and it is clear that Biden’s handlers will do anything but cross them. Instead, they’re using this crisis as an opportunity to try to foist their green agenda on the American people, while we have no choice but to go along.

Regan is right: the administration is pedal-to-the-metal on its zero-emissions agenda, and with gas rapidly becoming too expensive to purchase, we are all greens now. After all, the line between abject poverty and environmental consciousness has always been exceedingly thin.