DeSantis: Biden 'doesn't care if you suffer at the pump'

Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted President Joe Biden’s economic policies on Sunday, claiming that the Democratic president is against American energy independence.  

During an interview with Fox News, host Dan Bongino told the governor, “We’re seeing record gas prices, people are really struggling. We have a lot of people in Florida who are on fixed incomes down here. And yet this week we learned they canceled oil and gas leases.”

DeSantis quickly responded, noting the unprecedented rise in gas prices seen across the country.

“People are getting actually hammered with gas prices and the overall inflation is attributable more than anything to Biden’s policy of printing trillions and trillions of dollars like they have done since he has gotten into office,” he said.

Although the Biden administration has pushed multiple trillion-dollar spending packages through Congress since taking office – including a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill – it recently announced that the government canceled three oil and gas leases, a move which many conservative pundits have said will be felt directly by the American taxpayer, the Washington Post reported.

After Biden’s Department of the Interior killed the deal which would have allowed drilling in over 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, officials told CBS News that the cancellation stemmed from lack of industry interest in leasing in the area.”

The other two deals were killed by DOI because of “conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales.”

Responding to the downed energy deals, DeSantis charged that Biden’s energy policy “is intentional.”  

“They are intentionally reducing our ability to produce oil and gas here in the United States. They will beg OPEC for more oil, they’ll beg Maduro for more oil. I guess Maduro’s oil isn’t global warming but American is,” the governor said.

“I mean it is nonsense; it is ideology but it is very destructive,” he continued. “People are getting actually hammered with gas prices and the overall inflation is attributable more than anything to Biden’s policy of printing trillions and trillions of dollars like they have done since he has gotten into office. … He was warned by Larry Summers and other Democratic economists that if you do this, you are gonna spark inflation.”

In May of last year, Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton, warned Bidenagainst the massive spending packages, noting, “The sense of serenity and complacency being projected by the economic policymakers, that this is all something that can easily be managed, is misplaced.”

“And that’s a tax, Dan, on every single American,” DeSantis said referencing inflation. “We’ve got people that may be making seven, eight percent more year-over-year, but if the costs of everything to live are up 15 to 20 percent, and they are, the inflation is understating it when you look at the things that really matter.”

“So I think it’s been absolutely a failure in policy, and here’s the thing: Reverse course,” DeSantis asserted. “Start producing more energy here in the United States. He could very easily do that, but yet what does he do, as you just pointed out? They are still canceling oil and gas leases. They don’t want us to be energy independent, and they don’t care if you suffer at the pump.”