Horowitz: It’s worth a government shutdown to fight the climate energy shutdown

Americans are watching the energy blackouts and rationing across the great Atlantic pond with apprehension but also with relief that we are supposedly on the freedom side of that divide. But that is no longer true. Thanks to Brandon’s America, the diesel crisis alone could plunge the United States, particularly the Northeast, into a European-style dystopia of rolling blackouts and rationing. Welcome to phase two of the Great Reset: energy lockdowns.

While many are focused on prices for regular gasoline for cars, which the Biden administration has arbitrarily kept “relatively” less high than before, the diesel shortage will destroy our economy immediately after the election if nothing is done to immediately reverse this administration’s policies.

Of all the economic charts of the Brandon economy, this one of national diesel stockpiles, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is perhaps the most dire of all.

Diesel stockpiles have been down over 30% since Biden took office, even as the country’s population grows. Not only is diesel needed for some home fuel, but it also powers all of the trucks that bring every vital good, including food, imaginable to your door or to your local store. Given that trucks are force multipliers for the supply chain, a diesel crisis is much more impactful than even a spike in gasoline prices. As a result of this crisis, the U.S. is down to just 25 days of diesel supply, the lowest level since 2008, headed into the winter.

While the price of gasoline has been temporarily kept off the appalling peak of the spring, the price of diesel is still coasting near all-time highs, literally double the price since Biden took office!

The situation is even more dire in the Northeast, where people rely more on oil for heating, thanks to their governors declaring war on coal, fracking, and gas pipelines over the past decade. However, Biden understood that people focus on gasoline prices much more than diesel, even though the latter probably affects their bottom line more severely. In New England, where inventory is down to just one-third of normal levels, they are being forced to ration fuel and even fill home tanks to just partial levels before the winter.

Meanwhile, our reserves are all tapped out, as Biden has released or plans to release a total of 260 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, leaving the reserve down to just 401 million barrels of oil, the lowest level since June 1984. Thus, there is nowhere to run or hide from the shortage. Thanks to years of regulations on oil refiners, as well as ethanol mandates, we only have 129 refineries left in the country, just a handful in the Northeast, and most are operating near full capacity after having permanently shut down some operations during the lockdowns. The entire oil refinery output capacity surge of the Trump administration was wiped out, as we have lost over 1 million barrels per day of output since 2020.

Therefore, the day the elections are over, there is no deterrent against the Biden administration even pretending to do something about the energy crisis. The government will barrel head-first into European-style lockdowns and rationing, which have always been the goal. So, what should a victorious Republican Party do?

This is yet another reason, along with the fight for medical freedom and combatting FBI tyranny, why it is suicidal for Republicans to sign an omnibus bill this December rather than holding the budget as leverage over the White House into early next year so they can force the administration’s hand on energy regulations. Republicans must ensure the budget CR is extended into early next year so that a GOP Congress can write the new budget and reverse all the regulations on gas pipelines, oil refineries, terminals and storage, and coal production and reverse ethanol mandates. They must also fight for provisions to give the states more leeway in using their lands to promote energy growth.

Republicans must also prevent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from blocking the construction of new pipelines. There is record volume of natural gas flowing out of Texas’ black gold from the Permian Basin, but it is now bottlenecked because of a lack of pipelines. All regulations factoring in global warming need to be eliminated, because they are shutting down pipeline projects both at the production sources, such as Texas, and at the endpoints in the Northeast.

It is absurd for Republicans to fear that such brinkmanship would lead to a government shutdown after the American people have languished through a real shutdown of the private sector, and if they fail to confront Biden in this budget, we will suffer an energy shutdown.

Every American will remember the lockdowns of March-May 2020 for the rest of their lives. How many Americans remember the longest federal government shutdown, which occurred from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days)? “What shutdown?” would likely be the response of anyone who didn’t work for the government. And even those workers all got paid promptly and enjoyed a month of paid vacation. Boo-hoo. Some things are worth fighting for.