Survival of the unfittest, Joe’s ‘unwise’ LNG-export stall and other commentary

Even after Thursday’s “snap press conference that proceeded to prove just how poor his memory is,” President Biden will keep running for re-election, predicts Daniel McCarthy at The American Conservative. Beyond blunders like labeling “Egypt’s president, Abdel el-Sisi, ‘the president of Mexico,’” he also lacks the “self-control” to heed “the advisors who must have recognized what a disaster this would be.” He’s “angry, devious, and impulsive”: Witness how he “blamed his aides for the lawbreaking documented in Robert Hur’s report.” But Biden “will not resign; he’ll only fight harder, and humiliate himself all the more.” Fact is, “The most damning thing about Hur’s report is what it says about expectations of Biden. He can’t be convicted because he’s already an irrelevant old man in the eyes of Justice, in the eyes of his party, and doubtless in the eyes of the president of Mexico and other Middle East leaders, too.”

Team Biden “has halted pending approvals of exports of liquefied natural gas while it studies the economic and environmental effects of shipping such fuel abroad”; that “ill-timed and unwise” decision is “unlikely to advance the president’s climate-change ambitions and undermines the effort to defeat Russia in Ukraine,” warn Bloomberg’s editors. “The primary motivation” was “election-year politics.” Yet short-term it will force buyers to “rely more heavily on dirtier fuels, notably coal.” And the Russia-Ukraine war makes it “look even more ill-advised.” As the move pushes European nations “to source more fuel from elsewhere, including Russia” — and so “undermines Europe’s willingness to resist Russian aggression.” Conclusion: “Biden’s LNG initiative is bad politics and worse policy.”

In 2022, New York imposed a large unfunded mandate on schools “requiring them to replace their buses with electric models” whose “actual cost for local taxpayers is becoming clearer,” grumbles the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. “Electric replacements will cost New York schools and bus companies at least $189,000 more (for the smallest buses) and at least $255,000 more for largest buses.” Available state and federal assistance can cover only about a tenth of the added bill, not including “the costs of building charging capacity.” Yet the state is “charging ahead with another ‘nation-leading’ policy” that will force schools to “pay more than necessary for products that are eventually expected to come down in cost significantly.”

“Semafor reported that a coalition of Democratic and Republican anti-Trump groups was threatening anyone associated with the independent group No Labels, desperate to prevent the entry of a significant third candidate into this year’s general election,” notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “The quotes in the report made the groups sound like something out of The Godfather,” such as: “We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find.” “If only these folks could be half as tough against, say, Hamas,” snarks Geraghty. And now Democrats have hired a new communications adviser to counter third-party candidates. “Democracy dies in darkness, except when it gets attacked in broad daylight by the president’s allies” to keep other candidates off the ballot. 

The Congressional Budget Office now projects the yearly federal “deficit will exceed $2.5 trillion by 2034 if current policies remain in place (and assuming no further emergency spending of any kind, which seems like a stretch),” cautions Reason’s Eric Boehm. The CBO report “demonstrates how too much borrowing in the past will affect the future,” as “a huge factor driving deficits over the next decade will be rising interest payments on the $34 trillion (and rapidly growing) national debt.” The projections also “make clear that the federal government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” as tax collection is expected to increase, but “federal spending is expected to grow much faster — and into territory well outside of historical norms.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board