As many middle-income households are struggling to make ends meet in this economic climate, it's the responsibility of the Biden Administration and Congress to help reduce costs for American consumers. Instead, the actions coming from the White House and the majority party in Washington continue to raise prices for everything from gas to groceries. 

President Biden's harmful energy policies remain a key driver behind these burdensome price increases for Wisconsin households, especially as winter approaches. Until his administration reverses course and increases domestic oil and gas production, the ongoing energy crisis will only become more severe.

As we head into winter, American households will face the most expensive heating bills in over a decade, according to a forecast from the nonprofit National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Additionally, gasoline prices are once again climbing. As of writing this, the price of a single gallon of gas in Wisconsin sits above $4.00. This cost has risen tremendously in our state over the past month alone — nearly 50 cents per gallon.

Americans have every right to ask our government, why is this happening, and how can we stop it?

The unfortunate reality is that the energy policies coming from the White House are suffocating our own energy sector here in the United States. As of last month, federal oil-and-gas leases were down 97 percent compared to same point in time under the Trump Administration. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has a track record of resorting to dictators for oil rather than turning to American energy producers. But it turns out dictatorships, like Saudi Arabia, aren't as reliable as American-produced energy.

This week, OPEC+, a collection of oil-producing countries including Iran and Venezuela, announced — contrary to the wishes of President Biden — that it is slashing oil production by 2 million barrels per day, which will likely increase the price of gas to new heights worldwide.

In response, the White House plans to release another 10 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in an attempt to mitigate the rise in gas prices in our country. Previously when President Biden has opted to drain our SPR, he sold nearly one million barrels of our oil reserves to Unipec, a subsidiary of Sinopec, which is a company with strong ties to Chinese Communist Party. The SPR can be seen as our savings in oil, and it's supposed to be reserved and only released in the event of a supply disruption, not when foreign dictators refuse to comply with a U.S. President while lawmakers handcuff American energy production.

To put it mildly, the President's willingness to diminish our renowned SPR is worrisome and presents an unnecessary risk to our national security. In January, we had a total of 593 million barrels of oil put away within the SPR, which was its lowest mark since November of 2002. Now, less than a year later, the SPR crude oil inventory is down to 416 million barrels.

The simple solution to this ongoing issue is to incentivize and permit the U.S. energy sector to increase its production, which would lower gas prices and make our country stronger and less dependent on OPEC+. Rather than encouraging American energy companies to produce oil on our soil, the Biden Administration is lifting sanctions on Venezuela to allow Chevron to produce oil under the corrupt Nicholas Maduro regime and export it from Venezuela to the United States.

Earlier this year, I signed a letter to President Biden calling for the White House to restore American energy independence as Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices continued to spike. Following nearly two years of the U.S. relying on other countries for oil, OPEC+’s decision to cut production is further evidence why America must unleash the full power of domestic oil and gas producers immediately.