Freedom Line Blog

America as we know it was built largely upon and because of our rail industry, and today it remains a pillar of our economy.

Unfortunately, a destructive proposal before Congress misleadingly named the “Railway Safety Act” (RSA), part of broader surface transportation reauthorization, threatens great harm to our railroads.

Simply put, the bill has nothing to do with improving safety, but has a lot to do with advancing the political agenda of Big Labor.  At a moment when inflation burdens American families and fragile supply chains remain vulnerable to disruption, the last thing our economy or rail sector need is another costly federal mandate imposed upon one of the nation’s most important transportation sectors.

As an initial matter, as noted by The Wall Street Journal, the bill’s “safety” rationalization doesn’t withstand even passing scrutiny.  Over the past two decades alone, rail accident rates have plummeted by 40%, derailments have declined 46% and worker casualty rates have fallen 54%.

That improvement occurred because the private industry invests billions of private dollars every year into infrastructure upgrades, track maintenance, employee training, advanced braking systems, inspection technologies and countless other safety improvements.  Those investments have been facilitated by our existing regulatory framework, which has historically allowed leeway for innovation and operational flexibility, which in turn has allowed those investments to produced a rail network that continues to improve in both safety and efficiency.

The RSA and its proposed bureaucratic mandates, however, would undermine those investments and efforts.

For instance, the RSA would impose sweeping new federal micromanagement of crew sizes, inspections, equipment standards and operational procedures.  Those mandates would in turn saddle rail carriers with enormous compliance costs that ultimately do not disappear into thin air.  Rather, those costs inevitably mean higher prices for consumers, manufacturers, farmers, domestic energy producers and other businesses and industries that depend upon freight rail to move goods affordably across the country.

The bill’s provision requiring that freight trains operate with at least two crew members is among its most pernicious.

In addition to the rail industry’s rapidly improving safety record as noted above, absolutely no evidence suggests that a crew size mandate would do anything other than serve Big Labor’s wish list.

As a leading illustration, the infamous East Palestine, Ohio derailment of February 2023, which proponents of the RSA often cite, actually occurred with a three-person crew.

Additionally, federal reviews conducted in 2016 and 2019, along with the Federal Railroad Administration’s own more recent rulemaking process, found no causal relationship between mandatory crew size and accident reduction.  Yet the RSA would impose a one-size-fits-all staffing mandate anyway, effectively doubling labor costs for numerous freight operations without any demonstrated safety benefit.

That’s not sound public policy.  It’s government-imposed inefficiency.

Worse still, such mandates threaten to freeze innovation precisely when the transportation sector should be embracing it.  Advances in automation, monitoring systems and operational technology continue to improve safety and productivity across industries.  Freight rail should not be locked into outdated federally mandated staffing formulas designed less around safety than around protecting entrenched special interests from technological change.

Indeed, the RSA constitutes an end-around designed to accomplish through federal law what collective bargaining negotiations could not guarantee on their own: a permanently protected employment structure insulated from modernization and competitive pressures.

That approach carries consequences extending far beyond the rail industry itself.

Specifically, freight rail serves as a backbone of interstate commerce and supports millions of American jobs, so policies that reduce operational flexibility, discourage efficiency and increase costs inevitably weaken future investment in infrastructure modernization and network expansion.  Over time, that means slower freight movement, reduced competitiveness and diminished economic growth.

Heavy-handed federal mandates also tend to overlook the practical realities of a geographically vast and operationally diverse rail network.  Conditions vary dramatically across routes, regions and cargo types.  Existing law allows rail operators the flexibility to deploy resources where they make the greatest safety impact, rather than diverting time and money toward regulatory box-checking exercises crafted in Washington.

Congress should pursue transportation policy grounded in evidence, economic reality and genuine safety outcomes — not political theater designed to reward Big Labor.

Accordingly, at a time when Americans already face elevated prices across nearly every sector of the economy, lawmakers should avoid policies that make matters worse, and soundly reject the RSA.

The U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee today will host the third hearing in its health care affordability series, specifically examining the role providers and hospitals play in shaping the cost of care for Americans.

While the hearing will likely examine numerous issues, there is none more ripe for reform than the flawed 340B drug pricing program.

Originally enacted to help eligible safety-net providers buy medicines at steep discounts and pass the savings on to lower-income and vulnerable patients, the program has ballooned as a revenue stream for many participating hospitals and contract pharmacy chains.

As the size and complexity of the 340B program has expanded, participating hospitals and contract pharmacies have instead used the program to increase their own revenues – to the tune of $1.8 billion from 2024 to 2025 alone – rather than helping consumers, who were the law’s intended beneficiaries.

Study after study into that failure over the years has exposed how participating providers hoard tens of billions of dollars each year from drug sales occurring under the 340B program.  In fact, some of those hospitals went so far as to charge full prices to patients for discounted drugs, only to pocket the difference.  Federal agencies tasked with administering the 340B program have highlighted transparency concerns and the inability to accurately audit the program.

Fortunately, the Trump Administration has offered a proposal to actually improve matters for consumers.

Under the administration’s proposal, the 340B program would require hospitals to file claims with drug manufacturers for rebates, rather than the current process of granting those hospitals up-front drug price discounts.  With that change, the program would create a paper trail to prevent hospitals from exploiting the discounts in the shadows.

There have been similar successful real-world reforms enacted in other federal drug pricing programs such as the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program of 1990 and the Department of Veterans Affairs Federal Supply Schedule.  Each of those reforms created a more transparent paper trail that enhanced program efficiency in the way that the Trump Administration’s 340B program reform idea proposes.

Simply put, the 340B program, however well-intentioned, has proved to be a prescription for disaster.  In practice, its murky logistics has ended up benefiting participating providers at the expense of patients and increased healthcare costs.

Accordingly, as Congress continues its effort to reduce healthcare costs, it should focus on where reform and savings constitute low-hanging fruit:  the 340B program and the way it has to date served the interests of participating hospitals rather than patients.

Today, the House Energy & Commerce Committee holds a hearing entitled “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of the Prescription Drug Supply Chain” that offers another opportunity to advance substantive reform.

CFIF applauds the Committee, and members Brett Guthrie (R – Kentucky) and Morgan Griffith (R – Virginia), for their collective efforts on this issue of affordability.  In that effort, we also continue our own effort to emphasize the importance of avoiding destructive government price controls, which only serve to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals less available to Americans, not more available.  It’s also critical to maintain focus on ongoing reform in the pharmaceutical benefit manager (PBM) arena, which actually can bring improvement, as we’ve consistently emphasized:

For those unfamiliar, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) amount to middlemen that control prescription drugs for millions of Americans.  A majority of Americans receive health insurance through employer plans or government programs such as Medicare, which in turn cover prescription drugs through PBMs.  Those PBMs negotiate with drug companies and pay pharmacies, but throughout the process determine the drugs that insured patients may obtain and at what cost.

The problem is that PBMs operate in such an opaque and complex manner that they’re able to inflate drug costs while claiming to be working to reduce them.  It has reached a point where even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now investigating PBMs’ role in driving up costs for Americans.”

Another critical arena offering potential reform? What’s known as Section 340B:

At issue is Section 340B of the Public Health Service Act passed in 1992 to help hospitals – especially those serving low-income and uninsured populations – to purchase pharmaceuticals from drug manufacturers at significantly discounted prices.

In theory, those savings for hospitals should have translated into lower out-of-pocket prices for everyday patients by being passed along to them.

Since 1992, however, real-world practice has not lived up to that laudable Congressional intent.  As the number of participating hospitals and pharmacies has grown, oversight has failed to keep pace with the scale and complexity of the program.

As a result, hospitals and their partner pharmacies have increasingly exploited the 340B program in ways that bring significant revenue streams for themselves, but no demonstrable benefits for the consumers who were the law’s original intended beneficiaries.  Multiple studies examining the growing discrepancy have exposed how hospitals and their partners generate tens of billions of dollars each year from 340B drug sales.  Rarely, however, have those funds been passed on to patients in the form of lower drug prices or even reinvested into better patient care.

Outrageously, some hospitals even charged full prices to patients for pharmaceuticals discounted under the 340B program, and then pocketed the difference rather than pass them on to consumers as designed.  The federal agency in charge of administering the 340B program has highlighted those transparency concerns and an inability to accurately audit the program in practice.

Accordingly, since 1992 the 340B program hasn’t fulfilled its intended aspirations.  Instead of reducing drug costs for patients, it has too often incentivized hospital profiteering, distorted healthcare behavior and ultimately raised costs rather than lowering them.”

Our message is clear:  Keep up the positive work, and focus on reform where it works, while avoiding the catastrophic potential pitfalls of drug price controls, whether through so-called “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) or other iterations, or erosion of strong patent rights that make American pharmaceutical innovation the envy of the world.

Hollywood drama typically remains centered in sunny California and in our homes and theaters.

This week, however, offers a convergence between the entertainment industry and an opportunity for the Congress to assist the Trump Administration’s success on accelerating the U.S. economy through its deregulatory agenda.

Specifically, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is conducting a hearing on the proposed Netflix-Warner Brothers transaction, and the overarching theme should remain how allowing the free market, open competition and American innovation offer the best path to job creation and economic growth.

In other words:  The federal government should avoid needless interference in a mutually beneficial transaction between private parties.

Throughout the Biden Administration, we witnessed the economic harm caused by excess government interference into the U.S. economy, and since President Trump’s return to office we’ve witnessed an astonishing rebound about which we’ve frequently commented.  Growth is skyrocketing, and that reflects the benefit of a lower-tax, deregulatory agenda.

With that in mind, the U.S. Senate and Congress more generally must maintain the humility to realize that the parties involved are in the best position to weigh competing offers in this transaction, not federal bureaucrats.

Today’s video and streaming marketplace continues to demonstrate the constant innovation and growth that reflect America’s free market principles in an ideal world.  From services like YouTube to TikTok to Amazon Prime to HBO to traditional network television and every other streaming service, there has never been more competition for American viewing choices.  And new innovations, services, bundles and viewer models arrive almost daily.

Accordingly, there is simply no intelligent argument to be made that the video and streaming marketplace suffers from lack of competition or threat of market concentration.

We take no side in the particulars of the proposed Warner Brothers transaction, and it’s not our business what private parties determine to be in their shareholders’ and workers’ best interests.  That’s for the private and free market to determine, not big government.  If Warner Brothers determines that Netflix offers the best opportunity to continue its legacy and boost value, that’s not for bureaucrats to suffocate on technocratic whim.  For whatever it’s worth, Netflix has committed to preserving content spending, as well as continuing to license Warner Bros. programming to other services and even to maintain Warner’s theater release focus.   In contrast, wiser market observers note that the competing Paramount offer would more likely mean job losses due to the more overlapping production logistics of Paramount and Warner Bros.

Regardless, the important point is that this is a matter for the free market, not government dictate.

Whatever one’s personal preference in terms of programming, or idiosyncratic or ideological favoritism toward any of the private companies involved in this proposed transaction, the best way for the U.S. Senate and the federal government generally to ensure a thriving entertainment marketplace and promote jobs and innovation and economic growth is to follow the medical adage of “First, do no harm”

Congress must let the free market work.  That’s how we’re achieving remarkable economic growth at the moment, and that’s the best way for it to assist the Trump Administration’s proven deregulatory, pro-market agenda.

In order to lower healthcare costs for all Americans, a pivotal and necessary realm to address remains health insurance.

It’s therefore appropriate that the United States House of Representatives Committees on Ways & Means and Energy and Commerce will hold a timely hearing this week with executives representing major U.S. insurance companies.

Currently, the health insurance industry remains highly concentrated while American consumers continue to pay higher and higher healthcare costs.  At a deeper level, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) amount to middlemen that control prescription drugs for millions of Americans.  A majority of Americans receive health insurance through employer plans or government programs such as Medicare, which in turn cover prescription drugs through PBMs.  Those PBMs negotiate with drug companies and pay pharmacies, but throughout the process determine the drugs that insured patients may obtain and at what cost.

The problem is that PBMs operate in such an opaque and complex manner that they’re able to inflate drug costs while claiming to be working to reduce them.  It has reached a point where even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commenced an investigation of PBMs’ role in driving up costs for Americans.

That’s why this week’s hearing with insurance company executives is so important, and offers such a critical opportunity to make real, meaningful progress on the ongoing concern to American consumers.

It’s critical to emphasize that the answer to healthcare affordability doesn’t lie in counterproductive drug price controls or violating critical patent protections for pharmaceutical innovators.  That would do nothing to lower healthcare costs, and would instead only make critical lifesaving pharmaceuticals and healthcare innovations less available to Americans.

To improve consumer access and affordability, let’s achieve real reform where it matters – at the health insurance and PBM levels.

In a startling visual, our friends at Unleash Prosperity highlight something that has gone underreported to date:  The degree to which Americans’ average 401(k) plans have grown during both of President Trump’s terms, but fell by $25,000 under Joe Biden in inflation-adjusted terms.  Something to consider when Trump’s opponents attempt to claim that Americans suffer an “affordability” crisis under his leadership:

Your 401(k) Under Trump Versus Biden

As the United States Senate Finance Committee convenes today for a meeting entitled “The Rising Cost of Health Care:  Considering Meaningful Solutions for All Americans,” the enduring adage of medical care applies:  Do no harm.

Specifically, as we’ve detailed at CFIF, we must especially avoid potentially catastrophic ideas like drug price controls (whether through so-called “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) programs or any other) and violations of patent and intellectual property (IP) protections in which the United States leads the world.  Indeed, our more free-market approach explains why America leads the world in lifesaving healthcare innovation, accounting for an astonishing two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world each year:

The reasons that MFN schemes would only exacerbate existing problems are several.

First, drug price controls depress innovation in foreign nations such as those in the European Union (EU) that practice them.  That’s because drug innovation requires massive investments in research and development (R&D), often exceeding $2.6 billion to bring each new potential drug to the consumer market.  Consequently, when foreign governments impose artificially low prices, they necessarily strip pharmaceutical innovators of the revenue required to fund new treatments.  As a result, fewer breakthrough therapies arrive, and the slowdown in medical advances can cost lives.

As noted above, that consequence isn’t hypothetical or open to debate.  To wit, the more market-oriented U.S. accounts for an astounding two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world, far above our share of the world’s population or economic production.  That’s no accident or coincidence.

Second, and partly as a consequence of the dynamic described immediately above, drug price controls reduce access to lifesaving drugs.  Nations that impose them suffer from delayed drug availability and restricted access, whereas the newest and most effective pharmaceutical innovations typically reach the U.S. market first.

To illustrate, of 270 medicines introduced in the U.S. from 2011 through 2018, only 53% became available in France, 64% in Britain and 67% of them in Germany.  Only 52% of that 270 became available to Canadians, 41% to Australians and 48% to the Japanese.

If the U.S. were to adopt MFN pricing, it would foolishly import those foreign delays and access restrictions, in turn reducing American consumers’ access to cutting-edge treatments.”

Along the way, the Committee should also highlight the perils of continued subsidies for ObamaCare and the potential benefits of other patient-centered reforms like health savings accounts (HSAs) and Section 340B reform.  Healthcare costs remain an important concern for Americans, and we must promote federal policies that improve matters for consumers and patients, not harm them.

From Unleash Prosperity, following our latest Liberty Update commentary referencing the issue, more picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words excellence, highlighting the Mount Everest of Joe Biden’s inflation record versus President Trump’s:

Inflation: Biden Versus Trump, Part II

In our latest Liberty Update, we highlight the welcome series of positive economic news since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, including his superior record on inflation compared to his predecessor Joe Biden.  As is often the case, our friends at Unleash Prosperity have captured that inflation comparison in a helpful image, which is worth sharing and keeping in mind when the media continues to do its best to badmouth the Trump economy:

Trump Versus Biden On Inflation

Over at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), James Pethokoukis wrote a fascinating piece, “America’s Forgotten Prelude to Its Special Century,” in which he explains what led to the century during which America became the most prosperous, powerful and innovative nation in human history between 1870 and 1970.  “Yet America’s special century,” Pethokoukis notes, “did not emerge ex nihilo.  The pro-growth groundwork was laid in the less glamorous decades between 1790 and 1870.”

Critically, Pethokoukis notes the importance of intellectual property (IP), and patents in particular:

Equally important was an innovation culture, according to Rosenbloom.  Patents grew almost five times as fast as the population between the years 1790 and 1850.  Ordinary mechanics drove a culture of tinkering and incremental improvement (what economic historian Joel Mokyr has called the “Industrial Enlightenment.”).”

As we often highlight, strong patent and IP rights (including copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) play just as important a role today in America’s innovation and economy on everything from lifesaving pharmaceuticals to technology to entertainment.

In our latest Liberty Update, CFIF highlights the debut of the “Most Favored Patient” initiative, which offers the optimal blueprint going forward for lower drug costs, greater access and better healthcare.

Well, the policy heavyweights behind Most Favored Patient come from the group at Unleash Prosperity, including Steve Forbes, Stephen Moore, Phil Kerpen, and Thomas Philipson.  And in addition to their new work at Most Favored Patient, they’ve unveiled a new commentary explaining how drug prices in the U.S. are actually cheaper than in other developed nations with which we’re often unfairly compared:

It IS true that Americans pay more for new drugs under patent. That, of course, is because American pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars inventing the major breakthrough drugs and the rest of the world free-rides on those R&D costs.

But most drugs consumed in the U.S. are generics. Those prices are cheap. And generics last forever, whereas a patent lasts 10 to 20 years before generics take over.

A new blockbuster study by UP senior fellow Tomas Philipson has two amazing findings:

First: “The U.S. has the highest generic market share (93 percent).”

Second: “The U.S. has some of the LOWEST generic prices among developed countries.” Medicare and Medicaid pay almost 20% less for prescription drugs than in Europe, Canada, and the U.K. It is true Americans pay more for the patented drugs, but many residents of countries with socialized medicine don’t have access to these drugs at virtually any price because of socialist price controls and government-run health care.”

Along the way, they offer this helpful illustration:

This offers just a sample of the great work from Unleash Prosperity, and also the sort of policy insight that we can anticipate from Most Favored Patient.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.

There’s a good reason why one of Ronald Reagan’s most memorable adages remains so poignant today.

Namely, government officials’ ability to harm people whom their well-intentioned laws are meant to benefit remains a tragic and all-too-common pitfall of government activity.

A recent illustration of that tragic paradox exists in a California proposal known as AB 1414, which if enacted would prohibit landlords from making internet service subscriptions with specific service providers part of their rental packages.

Although any proposal that purports to increase tenant choice seems superficially positive in the abstract, the problem with AB 1414 is that it would only undermine a critical tool that makes broadband access more affordable for lower-income tenants throughout the state.

Here’s why.

Landlords serving lower-income tenants often reach agreement with internet service providers to offer group discounted rates to their tenants.  Accordingly, those lower-income tenants become able to access high-speed broadband at much lower rates and without such additional costs as deposits, installation fees and even credit history investigations.  It’s a big win for lower-income tenants.

However well-intentioned, AB 1414 would undermine those beneficial accommodations.  As a result, lower-income tenants would only suffer reduced access to high-speed internet, pay more for the service, reduce incentives for internet service providers to offer service to those customers and only widen the nation’s “digital divide” between upper-income and lower-income Americans.

What’s more, existing federal laws already protect tenants by banning service providers from imposing contractual provisions granting them exclusive rights to provide video services to apartment complexes.

Accordingly, while it’s in everyone’s interest to close the digital divide and increase internet access for lower-income consumers, AB 1414 will only have the opposite effect.  Hopefully California lawmakers perceive that reality in time.

In today’s hyper-competitive and ever-changing telecommunications sector, private enterprises must remain empowered to fluidly navigate and combine for greater market scale without gratuitous government regulatory interference.  How private companies choose to navigate today’s competitive environment isn’t particularly any of our business or concern, but the recent merger proposal between Charter Communications and Cox Communications does merit attention as it relates to something that the federal bureaucrats should not do:  intrusively overregulate.

It bears emphasis because for four years we at CFIF highlighted the egregious excess of the Biden Administration when it came to needlessly micromanaging private companies’ decisions on such matters.  The new Trump Administration has returned a more market-based economic approach that emphasizes lower taxes and less regulation, and the payoffs have already been obvious.

Let’s hope that current regulators – whether at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ) or Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – recognize the peril of the last administration’s discredited hyper-regulatory opposition to mergers of all sorts, and that they instead let the free market work itself out without needless bureaucratic interference.  As was the case in the first Trump Administration, the winners of that less-regulatory approach will be American consumers, our economy and private innovation.

As we at CFIF often highlight, strong intellectual property (IP) rights – including patent rights – constitute a core element of “American Exceptionalism” and explain how we became the most inventive, prosperous, technologically advanced nation in human history.  Our Founding Fathers considered IP so important that they explicitly protected it in the text of Article I of the United States Constitution.

Strong patent rights also explain how the U.S. accounts for an incredible two-thirds of all new lifesaving drugs introduced worldwide.

Elected officials must therefore work to protect strong IP and patent rights, not undermine them.   Unfortunately, several anti-patent bills currently before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week threaten to do exactly that.  Those bills include S. 1040, which rests on the myth of a “product-hopping” problem under U.S. law.

As CFIF has explained, however, bills like S. 1040 and acceptance of the “product-hopping” falsity would dangerously threaten U.S. innovation in an increasingly competitive world economy:

Myth:  Anti-patent activists employ this deceptive term when a manufacturer introduces a new, different drug that may compete with or replace  older version and provide expanded patient choice and access.  They claim that by introducing a new product covered by new patents, biopharmaceutical manufacturers are somehow engaging in anticompetitive activity, fending off entry of generic or biosimilar competitors.

Fact:  U.S. patent law rightfully grants patent rights for new and useful improvements to existing drugs.  That incentivizes research and development and the multiple years of risk-taking and experimentation needed to make existing products even better.  Such improvements open the door for reduced side effects, lower dosage requirements, improved potency, extended effectiveness or alternative uses.  Additionally, as the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, it’s important to upgrade existing drugs to address potentially mutating viruses and diseases. Depriving pharmaceutical innovators of patent protections for those critical improvements or otherwise disincentivizing those innovations would mean they’re far less likely to be developed, resulting in fewer options for patients.

We cannot jeopardize America’s status as the world’s leader in innovation, including pharmaceutical innovation and availability on the basis of anti-patent myths.  Hopefully wiser minds on the Senate Judiciary Committee prevail.

In this week’s Liberty Update, we highlight how the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is finally confronting the bloated federal workforce, which includes malfeasant officials like former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent Lois Lerner.  In that vein, our friends at Unleash Prosperity offer a visual today on just how vast and bloated that federal workforce has become:

What DOGE Confronts

From our friends at Unleash Prosperity, another fantastic visual aid to rebut the predictable default rationalization that climate change, rather than incompetent leadership, underlies wildfires in California or elsewhere:

Climate Change? No.

As 2025 approaches, a critical debate over extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts that finally ended America’s inglorious status as the developed world’s highest corporate tax rate looms.  Important in that debate is something that many people may find surprising:  America’s corporate tax rate remains too high.  As our friends at the Tax Foundation highlight, at 25.8%, it stands above the worldwide average of 23.51%.  Something to keep in mind when opponents of tax reform and greater global competitiveness attempt to mischaracterize our current rate as somehow too low.

U.S. 25.8% Corporate Tax Rate Remains Too High

From our friends at Unleash Prosperity, a handy illustration of how the Biden/Harris administration facilitated Iranian restrengthening, which in turn allowed them to fund terrorist proxies like Hamas prior to their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, by scaling back Trump administration sanctions on Iran.   The Biden/Harris administration’s conduct throughout its tenure in signaling international weakness has been both inexplicable and shameful:

Biden/Harris Facilitated Iran

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

If you happen to be someone who ever purchases gasoline, the answer is no on that front, as our friends at the Unleash Prosperity Hotline highlight.  The Biden/Harris administration and its cheerleaders frequently trumpet that inflation and prices for items like gasoline are down significantly from their recent highs, what they rarely bother to tell you is that they’re still up significantly from when Biden and Harris took over:

The Biden/Harris Effect

Despite attempts to portray the Biden/Harris administration as friendly toward domestic U.S. energy producers, American Enterprise Institute’s Benjamin Zycher highlights how that’s simply not the case.  Zycher cogently distinguishes the deceptive metric of oil and natural gas production on federal lands – which is a trailing indicator from permits and exploration years old – from new permits granted, which better reflects current friendliness toward U.S. energy producers.  It’s not a pretty picture for Biden/Harris apologists or the Harris campaign team:

Biden/Harris Unfriendly Toward U.S. Energy Production