On the menu today: Joe Biden contradicts Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm on whether suspending the federal gas tax will hurt the government’s ability to pay for infrastructure projects; and the president who said of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” wants his secretaries of State and Defense to stop being so provocative and antagonistic toward Russia in their public remarks. We’re in the very best of hands, America.
Whom Does Joe Biden Listen To?
This week, the White House curiously tried to roll out a proposal for a federal and state gas-tax holiday that senior administration officials had been downplaying and dismissing just a few days earlier.
Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, sounded awfully skeptical:
Part of the challenge with the gas tax, of course, is that it funds the roads. And we just did a big infrastructure bill to help fund the roads. So, if we do — if we remove the gas tax, that takes away the funding that was just passed by Congress to be able to do that. So that’s one of the challenges, but I’m not saying that that’s off the table. That is — as prices continue to rise, it’s certainly something the administration is considering, just like I know governors across the country are considering that.
But then Tuesday, Biden said to reporters, “It’s not going to be impact on major road construction and major repairs. . . . Is it going to, in fact, make it difficult to maintain our roads? The answer is: We have plenty of capacity to do that.”
Suspending the federal gas tax for three months would eliminate around $10 billion in federal revenues. That’s a sizable chunk of the roughly $48 billion the U.S. spends on highways in a typical year. The $10 billion figure may seem small in the context of the $1.2 trillion in spending in the big infrastructure bill, but that’s not the kind of money that can be found in the federal petty-cash drawer or behind the seat cushions in the Oval Office. And remember, every infrastructure project is going to cost significantly more than expected because of high prices for diesel fuel, oil (which is used to make asphalt), concrete, steel, and so on — and that’s not even getting into the issue of labor shortages.
(The editors of NR call suspending the gas tax “a bad idea and the wrong policy” because it’s attacking the wrong problem. Gas prices aren’t high because the taxes are too high — well, maybe they are in California. They’re high because of increasing demand, federal policies designed to discourage investment in fossil fuels, and a sudden decrease in refinery capacity, because companies are turning several of their oil refineries into biofuel-processing plants.
When Biden formally proposed the gas-tax holiday in his prepared remarks on Wednesday, he said, “What I’m proposing is suspending the federal gas tax without affecting the Highway Trust Fund. And here’s how we do that: With the tax revenues up this year and our deficit down over $1.6 trillion this year alone, we’ll still be able to fix our highways and bring down prices of gas. We can do both at the same time.”
Biden is correct that federal tax revenues are higher than expected this year — by a lot. As of May, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that this year’s federal tax revenue will be almost $800 billion higher than expected:
CBO projects that, under current law, revenues will increase by 19 percent in 2022, a slightly faster rate of growth than the 18 percent increase that occurred in 2021. That growth in 2022 results in part from the current economic expansion and the end of temporary provisions enacted in response to the pandemic that reduced revenues. However, even after accounting for those factors, tax collections so far in 2022 have been larger than currently available data on economic activity would suggest. CBO will evaluate the reasons for the discrepancy as more detailed information from tax returns becomes available. In total, revenues are projected to rise by $789 billion in 2022, to $4.8 trillion.
But there are a few catches with that. First, because of inflation, everything the government purchases is getting more expensive — everything from fuel for the Pentagon’s fighter jets to the paper, printer toner, and staplers in federal office buildings. The U.S. government owns about 650,000 vehicles, and only about 4,500 of them are electric, which means that the cost to operate all of those trucks, ambulances, FBI surveillance vans, and the presidential limo and motorcades is increasing. Just running the federal government at the same level as the previous year will cost more than it did in the past.
Second, as discussed recently, many economists expect that the U.S. is either in or about to enter a recession, and they expect unemployment to increase. That will reduce tax revenue, as people lose their jobs and stop paying income taxes. The big surge in federal tax revenue in the first half of this year may not continue into the second half of this year.
But what I found more intriguing was Biden’s dismissing the concern Granholm had specifically raised just a few days earlier. Do Biden and Granholm . . . you know, talk to each other? Do they talk face to face, or by phone? Does the president listen to her? Does he remember those conversations?
It seems pertinent to ask, because yesterday, during an Oval Office meeting with wind-power industry executives, Biden held up what the New York Post characterized as “a comically detailed cheat sheet prepared by his staff.” Yes, every presidential appearance is stage-managed, but this level of detail seems ridiculous:
The prepared instructions for Biden — titled “Offshore Wind Drop-By Sequence of Events” — tell Biden to “enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants.”
Then, the paper says, “YOU take YOUR seat.”
The typed-up note says that after reporters arrive, “YOU give brief comments (2 minutes).”
When reporters depart, “YOU ask Liz Shuler, President, AFL-CIO, a question” and then “YOU thank participants” and “YOU depart.”
Biden’s staff really needs to tell him to say hello and take his seat?
Remember, the last disclosure of Biden’s health assessment in November described him as “a healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.”
Does he look vigorous to you? Do “vigorous” men need detailed instructions to say hello and sit down?
I hate to keep harping on this, but Biden’s public schedule remains sparse. After leaving for his Delaware beach house last Friday at 11 a.m., Biden’s first public event this week was Tuesday afternoon, visiting a local Covid-vaccination clinic, followed by remarks about Covid-vaccinations for children. His next public event was 2 p.m. Wednesday, delivering “remarks on gas prices and Putin’s Price Hike.” Thursday morning, Biden hosted members of the Wounded Warrrior Project for their annual Soldier Ride, and Thursday afternoon, Biden had his meeting with the wind-power industry executives, which was only open to the press for a few minutes. As of this writing, Biden has no public events on his schedule for Friday.
Perhaps Biden needs to rest up; he is scheduled to travel to Europe this weekend for the G-7 and NATO summits.
But . . . what is the president doing with all that time when we can’t see him?
Hey, Remember Ukraine?
You notice that you’re not hearing much about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine these days in most of the U.S. national media, although maybe next week’s NATO summit will change that. Michael Brendan Dougherty and I see foreign policy quite differently most of the time, but I think the Notorious MBD makes a really compelling critique here:
One risk of making your rivals’ wars more costly is that you just might make their eventual victory even larger. If the Ukrainian army fails to make a crucial strategic retreat, and is broken in the cauldrons of the Donbas, the United States will have made Russia’s victory much costlier, but also much more significant than it otherwise would have been. Putin will be able to claim he defeated not just the nationalists in Ukraine, but the Western powers that funded and trained their army from 6,000 to nearly half a million men. After the humiliation in Afghanistan, it would be the second massive U.S.-funded and trained Army to be defeated in the space of two years. That is the real risk we are taking. And it’s not one that is going to leave NATO “reinvigorated” in the end. More like panicked and on the run. That is what I meant by becoming “pot-committed” in Ukraine. By so proudly and loudly raising the stakes, Western policy influencers such as Ivo Daalder now face impossible choices that “no one is prepared” to make. Is it a good thing for NATO to have two American-funded, NATO-supported armies destroyed in two years?
If you’re going to get into a de facto proxy war with Russia, you’re either in or you’re out. There’s no in-between. And when the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State are declaring policy goals that apparently the president hasn’t signed off upon, the administration and country are in big trouble:
During their whirlwind April trip, Austin appeared to expand the U.S. goals in Ukraine, saying publicly that the administration wanted the Ukrainians to win the war against Russia, not just defend themselves, and that the U.S. hoped to weaken Russia to the extent that it could not launch another unprovoked invasion. Blinken had publicly aligned himself with the remarks. Now Biden wanted to discuss the mounting headlines that resulted.
Biden thought the secretaries had gone too far, according to multiple administration officials familiar with the call. On the previously unreported conference call, as Austin flew to Germany and Blinken to Washington, the president expressed concern that the comments could set unrealistic expectations and increase the risk of the U.S. getting into a direct conflict with Russia. He told them to tone it down, said the officials.
Maybe Biden would have been more understanding if Austin and Blinken had just said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!”
The problem with U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia starts with the man at the top, who one moment is blurting out a policy of regime change in Moscow and the next minute is telling his cabinet secretaries to be less provocative. Biden is conflicted, erratic, and doesn’t really know what he wants — and thus our policies end up being schizophrenic.
Either you want to win the proxy war, and you’re willing to pay the price, or you aren’t. If you aren’t willing to pay the price, then don’t get sucked into the proxy war.
ADDENDUM: As you hear figures on the left citing mass shootings such as Uvalde in their analysis of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen, ask yourself: How many mass shooters are concealed-carry permit holders? Don’t point to the list from the Violence Policy Center; that list includes suicides. A more careful review of the data concludes that, “America’s 18 million concealed-carry permit holders accounted for 801 firearm-related homicides over a 15-year span, which amounts to roughly 0.7 percent of all firearm-related homicides during that time.”
To put it another way, the kind of person willing to take the time to fill out the forms and take the training courses is not the kind of person most likely wanting to commit a mass shooting.