Obama’s Destructive Policies Hit Consumers Hard

by Jack Lee

The good news is we’re recovering slowly from the worst recession in U.S. history. However, the economic future is still clouded with some pretty major uncertainties. Add to that, our recovery has been slowed by political missteps and outright incompetence by the Obama Administration.

One of their many major errors has been the current energy policy… that failure is reflected in pump prices. Since Obama took office just 3 years ago the price at the pump has risen on average by a record 83% and in some regional areas 90%, the latter due to more costly fuel formulations. California is one of those few places where fuel costs are the highest.

It always comes down to supply and demand.

Whatever blocks supply or increases demand drives up the cost, this is economics 101. Working against the consumer has been Obama’s energy policy that shrouds a hidden agenda that is becoming more clear every day. He and his far left allies would like to see a gallon of gasoline cost you $5. Why? Because this is the magic number, that tipping point, where your financial pain forces a sharp change where you go and how you get there. (Planes, trains and buses…not private automobiles, unless they are electric) This is the beginning of a long range socialist based political and ecological agenda. The plan forces struggling families to rely more on mass transportation, hybrid and electric vehicles while reducing the number of privately owned vehicles. This is just another component of averaging wealth, a clear cut socialist agenda.

The average family gasoline cost is now over $2000 per year and that takes money out of the budget that might otherwise be used for other goods and services. Additionally, when fuel prices go up as they have, we wind up spending more for those “goods and services” because transportation costs are substantially higher. Those costs must be ultimately passed on to you the consumer. So not only do you have less money to spend, but when you do, everything costs more.

This is slowing our recovery and changing the overall dynamics of our economy in ways that may be hard to reverse. Obama’s energy policy has been to focus on eliminating tax breaks for “Big Oil” that are not targeted in other sectors. Increase taxes on “Big Oil” and impose prohibitively complex and costly regulations to stall increasing our supply or refining ability. This has cost tens of thousands of jobs in the energy sector. Obama’s has blocked drilling in vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable. At the same time Obama has been spending billions of tax dollar subsidies on failed clean energy projects, such as expensive, short range all electric vehicles nobody wants or can afford.

In 1970 America produced all the oil we needed right here at home. However, four decades later all the obstructions by pseudo environmental groups working in concert with leftwing politics has forced us to depend on foreign oil imports for half of our energy needs. Since our economy is to a great extent dependent on oil that reliance has left us extremely vulnerable to the whims of unstable and unreliable foreign regimes. Oddly, every president since Nixon has promised to fix this, but none have and most have only made matters worse and the worst of the worst has been Obama.

I could understand where Obama is coming from better, if it were not for the fact we have enough domestic oil to supply our needs for hundred of years. The Bakken Field has been greatly underestimated. In 2008, the USGS issued a report that estimated the total technically recoverable oil in the Bakken at 3 to 4.3 billion barrels, but recently that estimate has risen to over 24 billion barrels and this keeps climbing as technology improves.

A report for November 2011 indicated that, for the first time in forty years, the U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products. Liberals seized on this report as evidence that the U.S. needs no acceleration in drilling, no XL pipeline — indeed, no new exploration or production of any kind. … In reality, the U.S. still imports 51% of its oil despite the existence of vast undeveloped reserves to be found offshore and onshore. The fact that America imports 51% of its oil, at huge cost and from unfriendly regimes including Venezuela, is hardly an argument to halt drilling.

Oil Fields Gushing in the U.S.. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six million barrels daily.