March 30, 2022
Refuses to Acknowledge Dems’ Role in Sky-High Gas Prices
| Val Demings Distances Herself From Anti-Drilling Policies She Once Championed Collin Anderson Washington Free Beacon |
| After Florida gas prices topped record highs, Sunshine State congresswoman Val Demings distanced herself from liberal environmental policies she supported just a year and a half ago that would curtail oil drilling in the United States. Asked Sunday about her support for the Green New Deal and whether the Biden administration’s “clean energy” policies are “to blame for these soaring gas prices,” Demings said she does “not support the Green New Deal” and accused her opponent, Republican senator Marco Rubio, of “playing politics.” In September 2020, however, Demings cosponsored the THRIVE Agenda, a $10 trillion liberal environmental bill pushed by the Green New Deal Network. … Demings’s attempt to distance herself from Democrats’ anti-oil policies comes as Florida experiences sky-high prices at the pump. In early March, gas prices in the state surged to an average of $4.38 a gallon, the highest level in Florida history. But Demings has refused to blame the trend on her party’s energy agenda—on Sunday, she instead said gas prices have increased due to oil companies “who take advantage of crisis situations like the one we are in to drive up costs as opposed to reducing it.” Demings also refused during her Sunday interview to call for increased oil production in the United States, a position Rubio regularly promotes. Under former president Donald Trump, the United States became a net annual petroleum exporter for the first time in more than 70 years. That status has shifted under President Joe Biden, with the United States set to again become a net oil importer in 2022. The reversal comes after Demings’s House Democratic colleagues pressured oil executives to decrease production due to climate change. Demings promoted her support for the THRIVE Agenda in a September 2020 press release, which says the bill will “transform our country and future” through “a new, clean economy.” |
| Read the rest in the Washington Free Beacon. |
| ### |