EDITORIAL: Democrats play game on inflation, energy prices

In an effort to boost her political fortunes, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has signed on to a bill that would suspend the federal gasoline tax through the end of the year in order to help drivers struggling with inflation and high prices at the pump. The federal gasoline tax, which hasn’t increased in almost 30 years, is 18.4 cents per gallon.

Sen. Cortez Masto, a Democrat, is up for re-election this fall. Nevada’s other member of the upper chamber, Sen. Jacky Rosen, has also added her name to the legislation as a co-sponsor. Sen. Rosen, a Democrat, runs again in 2024.

Both Sen. Cortez Masto and Sen. Rosen describe themselves to Nevada voters as pragmatic moderates. Yet once safely inside the Beltway, they have rarely dared to stray from their party’s extremist orthodoxy on spending and energy policy.

To be fair — despite the defections of Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kirsten Sinema on an additional “stimulus” package — few Senate Democrats have bucked the White House. According to the website fivethirtyeight, every Democrat in the upper chamber has voted with the president more than 92 percent of the time. Sen. Cortez Masto and Sen. Rosen come in at 95.1 percent.

But unlike Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, neither of Nevada’s senators has raised a peep of concern about the Build Back Better proposal, which would spend another $2 trillion of money the country doesn’t have even as inflation soars. That Sen. Cortez Masto and Sen. Rosen were prepared to support the now-stalled legislation is odd given their concerns over protecting motorists from high gasoline prices.

Buried deep in the bowels of Build Back Better is a proposal to hike taxes on oil and gas producers by $8 billion over the next decade. The legislation contains an escalating tax on methane emissions that would almost certainly be passed on to consumers. The Institute for Energy Research estimates the new levy would increase natural gas heating costs by 17 percent and boost price pressures on gasoline. About 180 million Americans — half the country — use natural gas to stay warm in the winter. Many businesses are customers, too.

Low-income Americans would bear the brunt of these higher costs because they tend to spend a higher percentage of their earnings on energy consumption.

Suspending the gasoline tax would generate headlines and give Democrats such as Sen. Cortez Masto something to point to as they struggle to survive the Biden albatross. But who other than a few policy wonks would notice that those same Democrats had also voted for an inflationary stealth energy tax intended to drive up heating costs?

Can there be any doubt why cynicism now dominates so much political discourse?