In early 2021, the Biden administration passed a 1.9T “American Rescue Plan” meant to ease the impact of COVID-related shutdowns. Then, on November 5, 2021, they passed a 1.2T “infrastructure spending bill” that the Democrats heralded as a key part of their “Build Back Better Plan“. This bill was 1.75T less than they originally wanted but was a compromise result of 13 House Republicans voting for the plan.

After this unprecedented spending spree, the inflation rate rose from its .7 – 2.4% range between 2012 and 2020 to 7% in 2021 and 7.5% so far in 2022. When the 2021 numbers came out, after Biden’s first year in office, the administration was quick to suggest it was transitory and only recently admitted that transitory probably wasn’t the right term to use. This admission started to reveal that the administration really had no handle on what to do about inflation since the government has begun spending recklessly.

One key contributor to this inflation is energy prices. For the first time since at least 1949, the US became a net oil exporter in 2020. Just after taking office, Biden withdrew permits for the Keystone Pipeline that would have provided high quality crude oil to the US. Biden also closed federal lands to oil exploration and increased the “social cost of carbon” to make using federal land for oil and gas drilling too costly. Then, after US District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction against using that “tax”, Biden issued an order to pause new federal land leases for oil and gas drilling; bypassing the judges’ ruling. The Biden administration has aggressively made the US more energy dependent on foreign sources (namely Russia) in the name of controlling climate change.

Now, after Putin invaded the Ukraine, this US energy policy is clearly even more unwise. In an address before the Bundestag (the German Parliament) the German prime minister Chancellor Olaf Scholz, announced a complete turn-about in military and energy policy. The energy policy will strive to be more independent by sustaining nuclear and coal power plants indefinitely and working to increase renewables. Former German Chancellor Angela Markel’s legacy left Germany dependent on Russia for 60% of their natural gas, 50% for their coal, and 35% for for oil while also attempting to foster renewable energy sources. She also worked to approve the NordStream pipeline that would have doubled the Russian dependency on natural gas. Former President Trump hailed it a mistake and imposed sanctions on the NordStream pipeline. However, President BIden immediately supported it by removing all sanctions after taking office.

However, US policy isn’t changing at all. In fact, sanctions against Putin include removing Russian banks from the SWIFT bank electronic exchange network except for Russian banks associated with oil and gas financial transactions (the prime revenue source to fund Russia’s war machine). Additionally, demonstrating the complete ignorance of current events, John Kerry (Biden’s climate envoy) stated that he hoped, despite the Ukraine invasion and other sanctions, Putin would “stay on track” in the fight against climate change.

Meanwhile, I just read a very prescient comment from a most unlikely source; George Takei (net worth $14M), former Star Trek actor “Sulu”. This comment revealed what I believe to be the key democratic party strategy for the coming mid-year election cycle. Despite the series of policy and economic blunders of this administration that has resulted in inflation at levels not seen since the 1980’s and a reversal of the first time the US has been energy independent since 1949, the message is this: “Americans need to endure higher food and gas prices in order to hurt Putin”. It seems like the Left is creating a focus on the Ukraine invasion at least partly because it will become a rallying cry that distracts from the current administration (and the democratic party in general) utter failure to govern.