Democrats are bragging about gas prices heading south, Save Jerseyans, but that’s sort of like celebrating losing five toes to frostbite when you initially expected to give up a leg. The average price per gallon of regular unleaded in New Jersey is still well above $4.00, up almost $1.00 from a year ago and lightyears above the price when Donald Trump left the White House.
Amazingly, your Democrat-dominated state congressional delegation – Malinowski, Kim, Sherrill, Gottheimer, and the rest of them – have now voted to INCREASE the price of gasoline.
That’s right. The deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act” includes a little-discussed 16.4 cent per barrel tax on crude oil and imported petroleum. The assessment is indexed to inflation, and there are other tax and fee hikes related to energy buried in the bill, too. The end result will inevitably be higher gas prices at the pump and MORE INFLATION across the board since transportation costs impact every sector of the economy.
Why would they do such a thing? Besides the obvious dictates of mathematical reality since they keep spending without cutting anything?
For your answer, look no further than the brewing battle between North Jersey “progressives” and the building trades over the Turnpike widening project. At least on paper, these factions are part of the same Democrat coalition. In reality, the Democrat Party’s coalition continues to fracture in part because of its increasingly far-Left base’s obsession with environmentalism, transgenderism, and other fringe interests which hold little personal or financial appeal for a guy who lays asphalt pavement for a living. In this case, Leftists want “green alternatives” to new and more efficient roadways in one of the most heavily-trafficked commuter and commercial corridors in the entire country.
The “blue collar” Democrats are largely gone. Even the ones who try to “pass” like Democrat Senate nominee John Fetterman in Pennsylvania advocate against fracking and in favor of Green New Deal policies. Remember when Joe Biden said high gas prices were part of a grand “transition”?
Nancy Pelosi herself recently justified the Inflation Reduction Act by declaring that “Mother Earth gets angry.”
You need to pay more for gas to satisfy the loudest (and wackiest) Democrats in their room. Your New Jersey Democrat congressman went right along with it. Don’t forget in November.
