Is It Deliberate?

Understanding the liberal mind and playbook as I do, I would have to say "Yes"; because the solution to this is drilling and it's the 800-pound gorilla in the room and they refuse to acknowledge it.

Government & Politics
Obama Indigestion Causing Gas Pains

The national average for gas is approaching $4 per gallon, once again causing pain at the pump. According to the U.S. Energy Department, the average yearly cost for an American family to fill up the car with gas will rise 28 percent from last year, or about $700. A family can't lose that much money without also losing the ability to buy other goods or services. The price of gasoline has skyrocketed by 67 percent since Barack Obama took office, but, needless to say, he isn't letting this crisis go to waste.

The fact is that Obama's energy policy is working exactly the way it was designed to work. His intent is to drive up the price of fossil fuels in order to make alternative energy sources seem more appealing. Alternative sources have been heavily subsidized for years and yet still can't rival fossil fuels, so, Obama reasons, prices on the latter must be driven higher.

In 2008, now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Obama began work on that less than one month after taking office in 2009 by reversing George W. Bush's expansion of offshore oil drilling. When the BP Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in April 2010, the administration took this as a golden opportunity to enact a moratorium on offshore drilling. Despite multiple court rulings against that moratorium and even being ruled in contempt, however, the administration persists with its policy.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put up the Left's favorite straw man, saying, "[W]e don't believe that the 'drill, baby, drill' program is the way that's going to get us to the energy independence that we need for America." No one says that domestic drilling on its own would achieve energy independence, but putting so much of our own oil off limits or underutilized -- offshore, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Bakken Formation to name but a few examples -- certainly doesn't help.

The White House has countered by floating a proposal to release some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to bring down prices. This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it doesn't replace domestic production, and, second, it would need to be replaced as expediently as possible, thus merely kicking the can down the road. In essence, the administration is admitting that supply must increase to offset price hikes, but in every other way, it's working against supply increases. Such rank indifference to the plight of ordinary Americans has become a White House hallmark.