Biden has few options to save his political career.
He is going to Saudi Arabia next month to bash Exxon.
"Begging for oil isn't going to lower gas prices," Rep. Ro Khanna said.
Within a few months, President Joe Biden is going to get wiped out.
Democrats are worried that a spike in oil and gas prices will cost them the election. The national average for a gallon of gas went past $5 for the first time. It's a 10 percent jump from a month ago, reflecting huge consumer demand outstrips the available supply of oil and the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
The grim political outlook for the White House was compounded by an inflation report that came in worse than anticipated. The prices for groceries, airfare, and rent increased at a rapid pace. Biden has made it his top domestic priority to fight rising prices.
There is a surge in gasoline prices. It's raising prices across the board for Americans because it's burdening businesses with bigger bills. There aren't many options left for the White House to reverse the shortage. In May, it committed to release one million barrels of oil per day from the reserve.
Jonathan Elkind is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. The Biden administration has been doing a lot of things that make sense.
Biden made a big bet with gas prices going up with no end in sight. He bashed Exxon and rebuked other large oil companies for running up huge profits in a letter, signalling a more aggressive approach against a sector that he wants to quickly ramp up production.
He's going to meet the Saudi crown prince in July even though he vows to turn Saudi Arabia into an international pariah over the killing of the journalist.
It's not certain if going after one bogeyman in the form of Big Oil and cozying up to another in the form of a questionable ally will be enough to keep Democrats from losing one or both chambers of Congress.
The possible image of Biden shaking hands with a Saudi leader who is reported to have been involved in the murder of a journalist is enough to cause concern among his Democrats.
The senator from Virginia told Insider that he thought the meeting was a bad idea and that the president's trip to Saudi Arabia was intended to encourage them to increase oil production.
"Begging for oil isn't going to lower gas prices," said Rep. Ro Khanna of California. He said Biden should push for the lifting of the blockade of Yemen.
"I don't think Saudis will lower gas prices," said Sen. Ron Wyden. There's a lot of evidence of their horrible human rights violations.
Even if Saudi pumped more crude, it wouldn't be enough to stop the spike in gas prices. Elkind said it wasn't like throwing a switch. That wouldn't immediately affect things.
The Biden administration is being pushed to think outside the box. The executive director of Employ America argues that the federal government should prioritize clean-energy initiatives in the long run.
It feels weird for Democrats to talk about doing things that are friendly to the industry. If you do the right things, you can prevent oil prices from crashing.
The global energy markets have been disrupted by the war in Ukraine and experts say the White House is powerless.
Congressional Democrats are having a hard time keeping their majority. The Democrats were blamed for worsened inflation and the choke off of domestic energy production because of their tax-and-spend liberalism.
Large oil companies are blamed for raking in huge profits at the expense of Americans who are squeezed at the gas pump. Wyden is set to unveil a plan that would slap oil companies with a surtax on profits deemed excessive and also taxing firms buying back their shares.
Wyden told Insider that Big Oil is doing so well because of the federal tax code. A majority of voters blame oil companies for the increase in gas prices, according to polls from the Groundwork Collaborative and the Washington Post.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in an interview that profits are four times what they were before the war in Ukraine. The oil company executives make a lot of money and brag about it to their shareholders.
Two senators released their own windfall tax proposals. The programs in Italy and the UK provide checks to the poor.
There is a chance of a windfall profits tax as well. Liberal and conservative economists don't like windfall taxes because they could be inflationary and damaging to efforts to increase crude production.
The Wyden plan would cause higher prices for consumers and discourage production. The approach is not the right one.
The fact that the Biden administration is floating a windfall profits tax or saying they're gonna consider it shows that they're in blame- shifting mode, not really constructive mode, according to Donald Schneider.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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