Draining the Swamp: Team Biden vs. Republicans

Happy tax day to those who celebrate.  To everyone else, let’s get on with the news, and since the audience tilts towards energy, we will start there.

FERC Commissioners

As of this moment, the White House has sent a name (Judy Chang) to Senator Manchin (who is both chair of the relevant committee and the likely swing vote with respect to this nomination), presumably for his approval.  He has interviewed Ms. Chang before recess, although his office will not confirm nor deny that.

It seems unlikely that Ms. Chang, who is a few steps to the left of former Chairman Glick, will be acceptable to Senator Manchin.  Moreover, Senator Manchin has gone out of his way to commend Chairman Phillips’ stewardship of the commission and to note that he considers him the chairman, not the “acting” or “interim” chairman.  That seems like a direct message to Team Biden to not nominate someone to take Commissioner Phillips’ place at the top of the Commission.

It is now the middle of April.  In a best-case scenario, one in which debt ceiling and FY 2024 appropriations go smoothly and no Senators die or become incapacitated, it would take the Senate about six months to examine and confirm a new nominee.  Even if Senator Manchin and the administration found a nominee on whom they could agree (unlikely), it would probably take until the end of the year to confirm anyone.

For contextual purposes, Commissioner Danly’s term expires June 30, and he can stay until replaced or until the end of this Congressional session.  It is very unlikely that the administration will nominate anyone to take his place.

Consequently, don’t be surprised if we start 2024 with just 3 commissioners at FERC.

One final thought bears notice with respect to the Senate.  It is now clear that we are unlikely to have 100 Senators healthy and voting at any given moment.  At this moment, we have only 97 (pending tomorrow’s return of McConnell and Fetterman; no telling when Senator Feinstein will reemerge), 48 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and Senator Sinema.  So, Manchin and Sinema are likely to have lots of leverage for the remainder of this Congress.

Permitting reform

Before they scooted out of lawless and increasingly dangerous Washington, DC (shootings now happening within blocks of the Capitol) for the Easter recess, the House of Representatives passed the most important energy legislation (outside the tax code) in more than a decade.

The Lower Energy Costs Act is a buffet of various energy and permitting provisions ranging from an affirmation of the wisdom of exporting crude oil (which strengthens the United States’ own domestic oil and natural gas production) to a remedy for a nettlesome provision in the Clean Water Act (Section 401) that has given States a de facto veto over energy projects.

The legislation is a good first step.  Given that it has taken more than 50 years to create this particular swamp, it seems reasonable to assume that it might take awhile to drain it.

The good news is that the environmental donor class now seems dimly aware that the barriers to energy projects they have created and curated over the last two generations can now be used against the wind, solar, and electric transmission projects in which they have invested or plan to invest.

Signs of common sense are starting to emerge.  For example, 29 Democrats joined all the House Republicans in support of Congressman Gary Palmer’s (R-AL) amendment to prevent the administration from banning gas stoves.  Twenty-one Democrats joined all House Republicans in voting to require the EPA to submit a report to Congress identifying regulations that have damaged energy independence and increased energy costs.

Despite these promising, halting steps, the Democrats eventually retreated to their corner:  just four House Democrats voted for the final legislation.

The legislation now goes onto the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) charmingly and diplomatically offered:  “[T]he House Republicans’ so-called energy bill is dead on arrival.  Dead on arrival.”  Most of that is pose; staff is already negotiating a Senate version.

There is a deal to be made in the Senate.  Senate Democrats believe that nationalizing the electric transmission grid – turning over decisions about planning and who pays for what with respect to electric transmission projects to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – is the best way to get transmission built rapidly.

Leaving aside the very shaky proposition that involving the federal government makes things happen more quickly (think FERC, transmission, and the unhappy history of Order 1000), Senate Democrats believe that placing the federal government in charge is necessary to bring about the energy transition that all the cool kids are talking about.

For their part, it is easy to imagine that some Senate Republicans might go along with that careless and suboptimal idea if they get more permitting concessions that make it easier to build natural gas and other types of pipelines.

Such a potential arrangement of the deck chairs is partially grounded in reality.

If one is serious about an energy transition, the only way it can possibly happen is if we build lots more transmission lines (to move solar and wind power), lots more natural gas pipelines (to move the natural gas that will provide the necessary electric generation when the intermittent sources are not generating), and lots more carbon dioxide pipelines (to storage locations).  No other approach has any hope of success.

Despite all that, the environmental crew will probably need to get mugged by reality a few more times before they are prepared to accept more pipelines of any kind.  About five years from now – after there have been enough wind, solar, and transmission projects stalled, delayed or cancelled to have gotten everyone’s attention – the environmentalists will be ready to deal with the real pathologies of our permitting process.

Who do the Democrats want to run against in 2024?

Despite his best efforts, President Trump is in a good spot with respect to the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.  At the same time, and for many of the same reasons, Democrats are in a similarly good position to win the 2024 general election for president.

Most of the commentary about the indictment and arrest of President Trump has managed to miss the simple truth that the entire show is good both for the former president (at least as far as the Republican nomination) and for the Democrats.

Mr. Trump, whose followers feed off a sometimes justified and legitimate sense of outrage as well as a persecution complex, managed to raise $15 million in the first few days after his processing in Manhattan.  At a $1.5 billion annual rate, that’s an impressive take for a week’s worth of Truth Socialing.

It should also come as no surprise that the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest was essentially placed in suspended animation after Mr. Trump’s arrest on charges as thin as gossamer.  That, too, works for Mr. Trump, as he holds anywhere from a 20 to 40-point lead over his nearest competitor.  Moreover, it will be difficult for the challengers to restart the campaign, as any attacks on Mr. Trump by fellow Republicans will, for the time being, make the attacker appear to be conspiring with the other side.

For their part, the Democrats are also getting what they want and need out of the arrest.  They need to make sure that Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, mostly because their own candidate is incapable of running, let alone winning, a campaign against anyone else.  They plan and prefer to run against Mr. Trump, for reasons that are obvious to pretty much everyone who can read survey results.

The only losers here are the American people.  The judicial system is being used for political purposes and those doing the using are no longer even bothering to hide their contempt for the system and for the people who rely on it to dispense justice in an even-handed way directed by the rule of law.

The voters sense that they are being treated as marks by both sides.  Survey data over the last six months has made it clear that voters in both parties and in neither party would prefer that the two senescent and fading leading candidates simply go away and give everyone a different set of options.  Unfortunately, the primary system in both parties militates against newcomers and outsiders and towards incumbents and retreads.  Ask Bernie Sanders.

The terrible truth is that Mr. Trump and the left are in a co-dependent relationship.  The left needs the constant undercurrent of outrage.  Mr. Trump needs a constant flow of adversaries on which he can grind his axes and against whom he can rally the troops.

Both sides raise money off it; both sides feed off it.

Mr. Bragg is just the most recent victim of this co-dependency, but, truthfully, it is his own fault.  With a suspect and novel legal theory (a misdemeanor can be a felony with a wave of the hand), a star witness who is a convicted felon, and the certainty of being overturned by the first court not on the payroll of the State of New York, precisely no one expects the former president to go to jail.

That’s not the point.  The point is that this endless churn works to the advantage of both Mr. Trump and his adversaries.  The Republicans can’t move on because there will always be one more passion play, one more ego-drama in which to defend the former president from those who would ostensibly destroy the Republic just to get him.

The Democrats can’t move on from it because opposition to Mr. Trump is now the central organizing political principle around which the party is constructed.

Unfortunately, now the judicial system has also been brought into play – by George Soros of all people -- against potential newcomers.  The Democrats not only want to select their own presidential nominee; they also want to select the Republicans presidential nominee for 2024.

Every family has at least one drama queen (sometimes they are male), who is not happy unless there is churn and unless they are at the center of the churn.  Over time, the churn becomes pathological and toxic.  Our national political family is riven with drama queens and their enablers, and the churn has been pathological and toxic to the body politic for some time now.

Shipping cash to communist China

Congresswoman Ashley Hinson (R-IA) recently tweeted out that:  “We have to stop taxpayer dollars from going to Communist China.  Every dime sent there is being used against us and to perpetuate their gross human rights abuses.”  That seems reasonable:  preventing Chinese communists from receiving American taxpayer cash is an important, uncontroversial, and straightforward first step in dealing with our adversary.

Why then do we keep doing it?

One very small example:  last December, Team Biden bragged about a $200 million grant to lithium battery company Microvast Holdings.  Unfortunately, Microvast operates out of China and was recently added to the SEC watchlist of Chinese companies that have failed to comply with American auditing requirements.  There are other examples like this.

A slightly more recent and egregious example is the Silicon Valley Bank bailout.  Thousands of Chinese nationals and companies – some or all affiliated with the CCP – banked and conducted their financing through Silicon Valley Bank.  When people talk about ensuring depositors above and beyond the $250,000 limit, in the case of Silicon Valley Bank that means shipping billions of dollars to Chinese nationals and companies in bed with the Chinese Communist Party.

So, if you’re in favor of the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors as constructed by the Biden Administration, you are in favor of sending cash to CCP-adjacent individuals and companies.

Communist China is also profiting at the expense of American taxpayers through the tax credits embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act.  Whatever else you think about alternative sources of energy and tax credits associated with them, all Americans should be able to agree that paying the communist regime in China to ship us solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries is a bad idea.

Senator Manchin tried his best to ensure that there were domestic content provisions associated with tax credits for electric vehicles and electric vehicle chargers.  No doubt the Treasury Department will figure out a way to evade those provisions.

This seems like something the Republicans could have tried to fix when they brought their own energy bill (the aforementioned Lower Energy Costs legislation) to the House floor.  If they were serious, they would have used the opportunity to ensure that American taxpayer cash is not, in fact, being sent to companies controlled by the slaving, genocidal communist regime currently in charge in China.

They chose not to.  Instead, they proceeded as if everything is fine and there is nothing to see here.

That made it especially notable when the RNC, immediately after Congresswoman Hinson’s remarks, added some context to that and tweeted out that:  “Joe Biden is not committed to confronting the Chinese Communist Party. If he was, he wouldn't be sending taxpayer money to CCP-backed companies.”

Fair enough.  Unfortunately, it is not yet clear that the Republicans themselves are any more committed than is Team Biden to ensuring that American taxpayer cash does not wind up making communist China richer.

Who’s to blame for the loss in Wisconsin?

 In the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, the Wall Street Journal took a moment to give their opinion on the election results, where a progressive (Janet Protasiewicz) who had repeatedly announced her disinterest in the rule of law, won the election to become the seventh (and decisive) vote on that state’s Supreme Court.

The Journal placed the defeat directly at the feet of pro-life Republicans and harrumphed that the Republicans better get their message straight on abortion or there would be similar electoral beatings in the offing.

That is certainly one way to look at the Wisconsin election results.  Here’s another:  the Republican candidate (Dan Kelly) was significantly outspent, in an election that shattered records for spending (at least $45 million) on what used to be nonpartisan judicial elections.

Here’s another way to think about it:  a largely diffident Republican candidate, who had literally already lost an election for this very same job not three years earlier to yet another collectivist (Jill Karofsky), ran a low-intensity campaign.  In fact, Judge Kelly, who was appointed by Governor Walker way back in 2016, has never won any sort of election and lost in 2020 and now in 2023 by 10 and 12 points, respectively.  It turns out – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – that candidate quality matters.

Yet another way to look at it:  in the very same election, the Republicans won a State Senate seat which gives them supermajority control over both houses of the Wisconsin legislature.  That would suggest that we are far from the bottom falling out for the Republicans in Wisconsin.

Or one could meditate on the fact that Senator Johnson, less than 5 months ago, managed to win reelection in Wisconsin (with an identical electorate).  He received 500,000 more votes than Mr. Kelly.  Compare that to Ms. Protasiewicz’s vote total, which was only about 300,000 less than Mandela Barnes (the Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022).

Those numbers suggest that the problem may have been partially related to turnout, which would be an indictment of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Or one could think about other instances where Republicans moderated or muddied their message with respect to life and lost anyhow.  In the recent Senate race in Pennsylvania, such a loss was to a candidate who may have been non compos mentis on Election Day.

In short, lots of things go into electoral defeats, just like lots of things go into electoral victories.  Before jumping to any more conclusions, the team over at the Journal may want to work a campaign or two.  Maybe they will learn something.

While we are waiting for that, it would probably be good if the pro-life movement and their allies and cognates start to think more holistically about the problem facing us.  There is, unfortunately, a lot of demand for abortion.  Restraining the channels of supply is a necessary but probably insufficient approach.  At some point, the pro-life community is going to need to create a society in which abortion is the least attractive option.

Fortunately, there is a recent case study in public policy in the United States that may be illuminative:  smoking.  As recently as 1965, smoking was commonplace pretty much everywhere and at all times.  Steady downward pressure from the public health community coupled with modest doses of legal discouragements (age and sales restrictions, taxes) and funding for cessation programs and alternatives have reduced the smoking rate to less than 15% of adults.

Of course, no analogy is perfect or precise.  However, the pro-life community and its arguments would be stronger if it addressed both the demand and supply side of this problem.

Losing Saudi Arabia

Earlier this month, the team over at OPEC announced that they intended to reduce their production by somewhere between 1.2 and 1.7 million barrels a day.  For purposes of context, the world uses about 100 million a barrels a day, so a reduction that size is going to cause an already tight oil market to get a little tighter.  By Summer, the price of oil will be around $100 per barrel, which means the United States will be looking at $4 per gallon gasoline.

In fact, that is almost certainly the specific reason Saudi Arabia drove this reduction – for them, an oil price of $100 a barrel is just about what they need to meet their domestic economic and political obligations.

The only surprising thing is that just about everyone was surprised by the announced reduction.  There is an unwillingness to believe that our usually dependable and reliable friends in Saudi Arabia would increase the price of our second most important commodity without warning or apparent concern about its effects on the unsteady economy of the United States.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have been drifting apart since Team Biden took the reins in Washington.  If you can remember way back to 2019, then-candidate Biden identified Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” nation, mostly over the killing of Saudi national Adnan Khashoggi.

Team Biden made it clear from that they intended to “re-orient” America’s interests in the Middle East away from Saudi Arabia.  They restarted the misguided and pointless  negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.  They have routinely tut-tutted the Kingdom over its role in the conflict in Yemen.

Contextually, both at home and in the international arena, Team Biden has treated the main product and export of the Saudis – oil – as a necessary and temporary evil rather than as something that has lifted billions out of poverty and driven billions into prosperity.

Finally, Team Biden has just been simply inattentive.  They have spent little time or effort in the region, especially compared to their immediate predecessors, who, despite suffering from their own pathologies, managed to create the Abraham Accords -- which express and expand the common economic and regional interests of the Arabs and Israelis – and is probably the most significant diplomatic and social breakthrough since the modern Middle East was drawn up in the wake of World War I.

Saudi Arabia lives in a dangerous neighborhood, and it has made a calculation that the United States is not likely to always be a dependable friend.  The Saudis have decided that they need to look out for their own interests first, and expand the list of those who may be able to help them in a tight spot (a list which now includes communist China).

One can hardly blame them.  If President Biden wins reelection next year, it is not as if the United States is going to suddenly change direction and surge to greatness under the leadership of an addled and senescent grandfather.

Because the world is a dangerous place full of people – Russian strongmen, Chinese communists, Iranian mullahs, etc. -- who prey on weakness, it is human nature to gravitate towards strength.  One of our most daring and durable enemies in the last 25 years, Osama bin Laden, said that:  “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will prefer the strong horse.”

The Saudis are making decisions based on their unemotional assessments of Team Biden’s real or perceived strength and the very real possibility that they may run the American government until 2029.

So is the rest of the world.  Buckle up.

Final Thoughts

Spending; defense and otherwise.  The Republicans are having trouble coming up with a spending plan for a couple of unhappy reasons.  First, they have inexplicably taken entitlement reform off the table.  That unwise decision has been solidified by Mr. Trump’s unwise attack on Governor DeSantis’ Congressional votes to modify Social Security, Medicare, and the full retirement age.

If you won’t increase taxes and can’t address entitlements, you can’t address deficit spending without reducing defense spending.  Therein lies the second underlying problem; there are an insufficient number of House Republicans who are prepared to trim defense spending to address federal spending.  This is despite the chronic underperformance of our national security apparatus for at least the most recent 35 years and probably the previous 75 years.

If the Republicans plan on getting serious about spending, they are going to have to engage on both entitlement reform and defense spending.

Finally on this topic, at some point, the Republicans are going to need to think seriously about retrieving some of the $6 trillion spending that has been enacted over the last three years, much of which has yet to be spent.

IRS.  Are the Republicans ever going to do anything about the additional 87,000 IRS agents provided for in the Inflation Reduction Act, or was that just a lot of campaign talk?  I mention it because the IRS recently issued its Strategic Operating Plan, which includes about $50 billion to buy some shiny new enforcement staff.

Dwell on Love, Not Loss.  Near the beginning of his halftime pep talk to his team in Any Given Sunday, the character played by Al Pacino offers the following bit of wisdom to his charges:  “You know, when you get old in life, things get taken from you.  I mean, that’s part of life.  But you only learn that when you start losing stuff.”

Those of a certain age will readily confirm that.  As the road traverses its final few miles, it seems as if relatives both close and distant drift away.  Children grow up and move onto their own lives.  Lovers and friends pass through your life; if you’re fortunate, they leave happy memories.

In his “Ode:  Intimations of Immortality,” the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth expressed both the longing for what was and the need to keep going.  “Though nothing can bring back the hour of glory in the flower/of splendor in the grass/we will grieve not/rather find strength in what remains behind.”

What remains behind are rarely material possessions.  Material things are, ironically, the least durable elements of our lives.  Most of what we carry, most of what is durable, are knowledge and memories.

Our transitory nature means that over the course of a lifetime we will eventually lose everything and everyone we care about.  Either they will cycle out of our lives, or they will die, or we will die.  Loneliness and pain are part of the human condition, just as love and joy are part of the human condition.

The best thing we can do is to love and cherish whoever God has put in our path for however long as they remain with us.  Treat those you love and those in your care as well as you can every day, and always be armed with the knowledge that the time with all of them is fleeting.

At the end of Hope Floats, the character played by Sandra Bullock offers perspective on some of this:  “Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it is the middle that counts the most.”

That’s absolutely true.  It is our nature to worry about beginnings and endings, but it is what we do in between – in the vast and (at first) seemingly endless middle of our days – that really matters.

Thank you again for reading, and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any thoughts, comments, or questions.