Democrats Are To Blame For Rising Health Care And Energy Prices

As the government shutdown enters its third week, both sides are pointing fingers, and no one is budging. Congressional Democrats are demanding more money to pay for health care, and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York is 100 percent correct: health care prices are going up under President Donald Trump.

In fact, so are electricity prices. Both these industries are victims of the spending cuts in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” Bill. Is Trump to blame? Of course not — at least not if you have even an ounce of honest intellectual integrity. Unfortunately, those are virtues rarely found in our elected leaders, and especially not Schumer.

How did we get here? First, energy prices: Starting in 2021, Democrats passed numerous spending bills. Most with little or no Republican votes, meant to bolster their preferred “green energy” industry.

The “American Rescue Plan” ($1.9 trillion) and “Inflation Reduction Act,” the “Infrastructure Investment Act” (north of a trillion) and “C.H.I.P.S and Science Act” ($280 billion) all carried major price tags. Along with the subsidies, wind and solar received preferential regulatory treatment and expedited permitting. No pesky and lengthy “Environmental Impact Studies” required for “green” industries, even if hasty offshore wind meant a few hundred dead whales washing up along the eastern seaboard.

This green infusion of cash gave the Biden administration the talking point it desperately wanted: green energy “works.” Then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm bragged about the numbers: jobs, permits, gigawatts, but these metrics were buoyed by endless government spending.

Green Tax Giveaways End

Then came Trump’s second term. With Republican majorities in Congress, the tax giveaways ended.

The result of that is pain, no doubt. Painful for people who got a “green job” under President Joe Biden only to realize that this industry cannot survive in the free market. Painful for companies who depend on green loans and green grants that now cannot make ends meet because there is very little free market demand for their product, like electric vehicles. And painful for all of us as the real cost of wind and solar takes effect.

Wind and solar are expensive and intermittent. To quote Billy Bob Thornton’s character in the hit show “Landman”: “Believe me if Exxon thought them —- things were the future they’d be putting them all over the —- place.”

Or, to quote a real person (and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supporter), Warren Buffett, about wind farms: “they don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

It is not President Trump’s fault the daily bailout of a failing green industry has ended. Yes, it will mean short-term pain, but that is nothing compared to using tax dollars to keep alive an industry too weak to survive outside the government greenhouse. Taxpayers cannot be on the hook for this or any industry’s sustenance.

Obamacare’s Consequences

The very same case is made about health care costs, and as much as Schumer and Democrat leaders want to cast blame elsewhere, Obamacare received no Republican votes because they knew it would be a disaster. And it is. Even The Washington Post editorial board thinks so.

Obamacare was lousy legislation destined to enable lousy products. Like wind and solar, it cannot survive without endless government spending, and like green energy metrics, Obamacare, too, is full of gimmicks designed to deceive the American people that it is somehow working.

“Millions of people” depend on it for “quality, affordable healthcare” former President Obama tweets. Democrats praised President Biden for “lowering [healthcare] costs for millions of Americans.” Such achievement and yet here we are amid a government shutdown.

Obamacare’s “success” is a mirage. Wind and solar’s “success” is a fantasy. Proof: look at your health care costs and electricity bills. Both costs are up around 30 percent in the past few years. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has seen premiums go up 150 percent. Granholm stupidly proclaimed “the wind is free.” For something “affordable” and “free” it sure does cost a lot.  

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declares a “healthcare crisis” that Republicans created. That may not be untrue, Republicans did cut the subsidies, but it is dishonest. Both industries have been costing the American taxpayer a fortune in subsidies, grants, backstops, rebates, tax credits, in government programs swooning with elegant nomenclature like “strengthening” and “investing” when what Democrats really mean is “bailout.”

Our health care industry is an expensive, unreliable mess. Our electricity industry and national grid is an expensive, unreliable mess. Both are the result of flawed legislation and terrible policies, orchestrated by and shoved down the American people’s throats by one party, and it is not Trump’s party.

The American people deserve so much better than these petty, partisan games, and they deserve so much better than career politicians coopting tax dollars and steering them to pet projects to save face during campaign season. Green energy and Obamacare are terrible wounds on the American body politic, and President Trump deserves great credit for ripping off the band aid. Only then can the healing process begin.

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF.