House GOP reelection arm targets vulnerable congressional Democrats over record-high gas prices

FIRST ON FOX: With gas prices at an all-time high, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is taking aim at 10 House Democrats who likely face challenging re-elections in November’s midterms with new ads blaming them for the soaring prices at the pump.

"Sean Patrick Maloney and Joe Biden crippled American energy production," the narrator charges in a new digital ad by the House GOP re-election arm.

The spot – which targets Maloney, a five-term congressman from New York’s 18th Congressional District and chair of the rival Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) – includes recent press headlines spotlighting what’s termed President Biden’s "war on energy" and "attack on fossil fuel."

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The narrator in the ad, which was shared first with Fox News on Wednesday, then argues "now you’re paying the price," over a visual of a Wall Street Journal headline from Tuesday that reads "Gasoline Price Hits Record High."

"Tell Sean Patrick Maloney we can’t afford this," the narrator implores.

The NRCC is going up with similar ads targeting Democratic Reps. Tom O’Halleran (AZ-02) of Arizona; Sharice Davids (KS-03) of Kansas; Elissa Slotkin (MI-07) and Dan Kildee (MI-08) of Michigan;  Angie Craig (MN-02) of Minnesota; Chris Pappas (NH-01) of New Hampshire; Susie Lee (NV-03) of Nevada; Elaine Luria (VA-02) of Virginia; and Kim Schrier (WA-08) of Washington state.

In a release announcing its new spots, the NRCC takes aim at the Biden administration and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, arguing that "since taking power Democrats launched a full-scale war on energy." The NRCC points to what it calls "slow-rolling" oil and gas permits; banning new oil and gas leases on federal lands, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have brought oil from the sand fields of western Canada to the U.S.; and halting new federal support for oil and gas projects overseas.

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"Joe Biden’s war on American energy began the second he took power, and now American consumers are paying the price," NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota emphasizes. "The blame for record-high gas prices lies solely at the feet of Joe Biden and House Democrats."  

Gas prices nose-dived due to plummeting demand for fuel during the spring and summer of 2020, as the coronavirus, the worst pandemic to strike the globe in a century, flattened economies across the world. But prices started rising later that year and started soaring during the summer and fall of last year, amid the worst spikes in inflation in decades. 

Gas prices surged even higher the past couple of months, as Russia began building up forces and threatening neighboring Ukraine, ahead of its full-scale invasion. The average national price of regular gasoline as of Wednesday, according to AAA, was $4.25 per gallon. 

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Republicans have been hammering congressional Democrats on inflation and on rising gas prices since last summer, as they aim to win back majorities in both the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. The GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member House this November to win back the majority it lost in the 2018 elections. And a rising Republican chorus has criticized Biden for handicapping the nation’s oil and gas production.

The president on Tuesday fired back against GOP attacks that his energy policies are to blame for soaring gas prices. As he announced the U.S. would ban imports of Russian oil to punish Moscow for its deadly assault on Ukraine, Biden argued that "it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That’s simply not true."

"Even amid the pandemic, companies in the U.S. pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor’s first year," the president stated.

While the White House has used the comparison to former President Trump’s first year in office, in 2017, to make the point that it haven’t capped oil production, it fails to note that production was higher in 2019 under Trump, before the pandemic swept the nation.

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The president also pointed out that 90% of onshore domestic oil production takes place on nonfederal-government-owned land. And the administration, pushing back on GOP charges over the nixing of the Keystone XL pipeline permit, notes that only 8% of the pipeline was completed at that time, and that even if it had been allowed to be completed, oil wouldn’t have flowed through the pipeline until 2023.

The president also insisted that the U.S. needs to beef up investments in clean energy so Americans are not at the mercy of gas prices in the future.

Biden and his administration in recent days have also been blaming the Russian buildup and attack on Ukraine for the spike in gas prices. "Since Putin began his military buildup on Ukrainian borders — just since then — the price of the gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents," the president said this week. "And with this action, it’s going to go up further.

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But GOP leaders have rebutted the president, noting that gas prices were steadily climbing well before Russia’s military buildup and invasion of Ukraine.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) charged that "Americans are paying Putin’s Price at the pump and they have Republicans to blame for standing by while the Trump-Pence administration caved to Putin and weakened Ukraine.

And DCCC spokesperson Chris Taylor added that "House Democrats and the Biden Administration will continue working to lower energy costs in the short term and over the long run."