The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Biden is taking us back to the ’70s — the worst of them

Getty Images

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that President Biden is old enough to remember the 1970s. But there is something wrong with his attempts to bring the 1970s back to life.

Remember the gas lines of the early ’70s? No doubt Biden used to sit in them, as so many Americans did. Well, with Biden now in the White House, people all over the Eastern Seaboard found themselves sitting in lines for gas this month when a major pipeline was shut down in response to a cyberattack. (Or, even worse, they learned there was no point in lining up at all, because there was simply no gas available to buy at most stations.)

Gas lines. Dry tanks. This is something that hasn’t happened since we were trying to fuel up our Ford Fairmonts and Buick Centurys during the Carter administration. Even when the United States went to war in the Middle East, in the 1990s and 2000s, we didn’t have gas lines. It takes a real effort to cause fuel shortages so extensive that much of the country’s eastern half runs out of gas. Unfortunately, that seems to have been Biden’s plan from the beginning.

On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline. As he wrote then, “approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States in urging other countries to take ambitious climate action.” (That is to say, it would bring oil from Canada to the northern United States.) Biden may want to pretend he wants more fuel, but his policies are leading to shortages and gas lines.

Meanwhile, we’re also back to the 1970s when it comes to violence in the Middle East. Less than a year ago, then-President Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after he helped establish diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), soon joined by several other Arab countries. “As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game-changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, explained to FOX News.

Well, that’s not going to happen, it now seems. Instead of building on Trump’s positive momentum, the Biden administration is allowing a level of violence we haven’t seen in decades.

How about federal spending? Biden’s team is throwing trillions — with a “T” — out the window, with little oversight and no questions asked about whether it is necessary. The president is even taking credit for pandemic-recovery payments sent out in December, before he took office.

In the real world, we are seeing vast economic improvements. In Biden’s world, it’s still April of 2020 and we need additional trillions in unemployment spending, infrastructure spending, and more. Spending, spending, spending.

Inflation, not seen since the 1970s, is roaring back, too. “At the end of the first quarter last year, a sheet of seven-sixteenths OSB [or plywood] was approximately $9.55,” the president of Home Depot announced recently. “As we exited the first quarter of this year, that same sheet of OSB more than quadrupled in price to $39.76.” The same thing is true for appliances, food, cars, homes. Everything is more expensive, and Biden’s policies will only make things worse.

“Stagflation,” we used to call it back in the ’70s. Well, it’s back today, big time.

Joe Biden spent most of the 1970s serving in the U.S Senate alongside such Democratic fossils as Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio. He’s trying to bring their policies back to life in 2021. If we don’t stop him, right away, we’ll all be sorry.

Corey R. Lewandowski was former President Trump’s first campaign manager and a senior adviser to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign. He is co-author with David Bossie of the book, “Trump: America First,” and of “Trump’s Enemies,” and “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency.” Follow him on Twitter @CLewandowski_

Tags Arab-Israeli peace Colonial Pipeline hack Donald Trump fracking gas lines Government spending Inflation Israel Israel-Palestinian conflict Jimmy Carter Joe Biden Keystone XL pipeline Middle East peace deal Presidency of Joe Biden Stagflation trumpism

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.