Last Wednesday Joe Biden became President, and immediately began to implement the policies many Americans feared he would. Many of the Executive Orders he signed reversed former President Trump’s agenda, and some will have a direct impact on how we live.
Biden has claimed he would increase employment in the U. S., and would improve the lives of all, including rural America. Just a look at a handful of his initial orders belies those campaign promises.
On the employment front, two will have immediate effect on jobs. One of those orders halted, for sixty days, new oil and gas leases on federal lands. One reliably blue state will be negatively impacted by this order. New Mexico, which relies on the energy industry for many jobs and much state revenue, has most of its drilling and fracking done on federal land.
Biden carried New Mexico by 10 points in the 2020 election, but if this order is not rescinded, a study by the University of Wyoming predicts that that state will lose, over the next four years, more than 20 billion dollars in GDP, in excess of 36,000 jobs, 6.3 billion dollars in tax monies and almost 10 billion dollars in wages for workers.
Our new President was not done with the energy policy he has put forth. Biden stopped the development of the now infamous XL pipeline, which will bring Canadian oil across several states to refineries in Texas. Job loss for this has been estimated at as much as 40,000, with perhaps thousands more in industries associated with the oil. His rationale in this does not fit with the facts; transporting oil by truck or rail is far more likely to result in accidents and large spills than transporting it by the pipeline.
Democrats have always been eager to find new ways to increase taxes on the populace, and Biden’s choice for Transportation Secretary, former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, explained how the new administration plans to increase funding for the Highway Trust Fund. Currently that Fund gets its money from federal tax on gas, which is 18.4 cents per gallon, and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel fuel. But Biden’s plan, as announced in his confirmation hearing by Buttigieg, would base the tax on the number of miles a person traveled per year.
For people who live in metropolitan areas, that might seem reasonable, but in rural areas where goods and services sometimes are many miles from where many people live in the Flyover Country, that would increase the amount of money sent to the feds. Here where we live, in Edgar County, Illinois, people routinely drive to Terre Haute, Indiana or Champaign, Illinois for better shopping choices or doctor’s appointments. (For example, my doctors are all in Terre Haute, 25 miles from our home.) The miles add up, and under that plan, so would the money the federal government takes out of our pocket each year.
To implement this gas tax policy would also require an intrusive reach into the private lives of American citizens. The feds would know where and when we travel, and it would take little extra to pinpoint our activities, making George Orwell’s 1984 look tame by comparison.
Another Executive Order by Biden is designed to increase the power of the deep blue states in the House of Representatives. The census bureau is now instructed to include illegal aliens in the count of Americans for the purpose of apportioning Representatives. Since most illegal aliens reside in Democratic controlled states, this would mean that those states would receive more numbers in the House at the expense of those states who have many fewer such residents.
To add to the dismay many Americans feel about the change of administrations, the Biden-Harris team released a statement, on the 48th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion on demand. That statement affirmed the administration’s assertion that the decision was “foundational” (whatever that means) and will work to codify the decision. To codify abortion in a federal law would make it much more difficult for the courts to mitigate the effects of Roe v. Wade, which has resulted in the death of over 60 million human beings.
Joe Biden came into office pledging to “unify” America after the Trump years. But these are just a few of the actions taken in less than a week that has deepened the divide between his party and many in the country. Much more of this unification action might just instigate another civil war.