Wall Street Journal (3/1/22) editorial: “President Biden is no Olaf Scholz. The new Chancellor upended decades of center-left German defense and energy policy this week after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and Mr. Biden had a similar opportunity in his State of the Union address Tuesday. He missed the moment. The President remained on the same policy course of his first year, albeit dressed up in new anti-inflation packaging. More defense spending to meet the threats from autocrats? No. A new appreciation for the contribution of fossil fuels to American and European security? Not a word. A note that government spending contributed to the highest inflation in 40 years? Nope…On his domestic agenda, Mr. Biden acknowledged inflation, as he had to given the polls. But he blamed rising prices on the pandemic and greedy businesses, and his solutions are to unleash prosecutors and antitrust cops, and to spend even more money on social welfare and entitlements. His most other-worldly line was that his program would ‘cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combating climate change.’
The entire point of his climate agenda is to raise the price of energy for Americans by reducing the supply and increasing the cost of coal, oil and natural gas. His regulators are working to do that every day in every way. It was as if the horror of the last week, which exposed the folly of Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas, had never happened. The climate left still has a choke hold on this Presidency.”
