Democrats Can Have Cheap Gas or They Can Have Radical Climate Policy

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, February 09, 2022

 

Senators Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.) are proposing to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the rest of 2022. This profile in cowardice comes from two Democrats whose party is facing a possible midterm wipeout thanks to high inflation that has been made worse by its spendthrift policies.

 

This tax cut is, of course, precisely the wrong idea — particularly from the Democratic point of view.

 

Treating inflation with a tax cut is like treating high blood pressure with meth. The problem we have comes from too much money sloshing around the economy chasing too few goods and services as supply chains struggle to reassemble themselves. The conventional Keynesian view, to which Democrats ordinarily swear allegiance, is that you should raise taxes when you have an inflation problem, taking money out of consumers’ pockets, and thereby putting some deflationary pressure on economic activity.

 

We love one half of the Keynesian model (cutting taxes and running deficits like hell when the economy is slow) but the other half (raising taxes, cutting spending, and reducing the debt when the economy is running hot) we don’t care for so much. There are Keynesian and non-Keynesian economists who provide useful and interesting analysis, but this half-Keynesian stuff is just what you get when politicians don’t have the courage of their convictions.

 

And nowhere is that lack of conviction more evident than in Democrats’ attitude toward gasoline prices. The progressive orthodoxy of the moment is that we are facing an existential planetary crisis from climate change caused largely by the burning of hydrocarbon fuels, and Democrats have offered wide-ranging, dramatic — and, at times, positively tyrannical — proposals for remaking almost every aspect of economic life, from transportation to trade, to address the climate situation. There are some serious people who have serious ideas about that — none of which supposes that the price of a gallon of gasoline won’t go up, that nobody will be inconvenienced, or that consumers will not feel the pinch.

 

If Democrats actually believed the things they say they believe, then what they’d be calling for in this moment is something like a $2-per-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax. That policy would produce one of two things: $250 billion a year in extra tax revenue (Americans consume about 125 billion gallons of gasoline a year) or a decrease in gasoline consumption. Either outcome, or a combination of the two, would be a win for progressives — if they actually believed the things they say.

 

Which, of course, they don’t.

 

If Democrats believed the things they say they believe about climate change, then they would be working on policies that would fast-track (and, if necessary, subsidize) the building of as many new nuclear-power plants as we could put up, and they would be greenlighting export facilities and infrastructure to get relatively clean American natural gas into the markets in coal-dependent countries around the world. Even the European Union is finally starting to admit that nuclear energy and natural gas are going to be necessary components in its climate policy and taking the necessary steps to enable and encourage investment in those energy sources.

 

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States went up about $1 in 2021. That buck a gallon is a minor irritation for some Americans, a heavy burden on others. But if you believe, as Democrats say they do, that we are facing near-term catastrophic climate chaos caused largely by the consumption of fossil fuels, that should be a win — at a price we are willing to pay. Not only should progressives welcome higher gasoline prices, they should work to keep driving up prices until consumption falls dramatically. And if saving the world means that poor Maggie Hassan has to go back to being a lawyer or while away her days in some Kennedy School sinecure, isn’t that a small price to pay?

 

Radical change is radically expensive. As William F. Buckley Jr. once put it: “Idealism is fine; but as it approaches reality, the cost becomes prohibitive.” Senators Kelly and Hassan don’t have the political courage to face the cost, which is heavy — this stuff takes heaps of money.

 

“To combat climate change,” Senator Hassan insists, “we must build a cleaner energy future.” Fair enough. But then there’s the silent addendum: “as long as nobody in my state has to pay a nickel for it.”

 

You can’t have an aggressive climate policy and cheap gasoline. You get one or the other. Democrats who fret about “climate deniers” should start by addressing the denial of that fundamental reality within their own ranks.