Iran war oil price rise makes affordability bigger issue

The November midterm elections were always supposed to be about affordability. Then bombs started falling in Iran.

The escalating US war in the Middle East threatens to spoil the cost-of-living story that has so far defined the fight for control of Congress.

The election, now less than eight months away, will determine whether President Donald Trump will maintain his tight grip on Washington or spend his last two years in office protecting the Democratic congressional majority.

Both parties have sought to capitalize on kitchen-table issues as Americans struggle to keep up with the rising cost of common goods and services. War in Iran now threatens to exacerbate those concerns — and Democrats are seizing the opportunity to pit Trump and Republicans against each other to trigger a conflict that could make life even more expensive for ordinary Americans.

“Since there was no plan underway, I think a lot of things will happen that will have unintended consequences,” Senator Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in an interview with CNBC. “I mean you look at how much gas has gone up in a day, oil futures have gone up, there are going to be a lot of impacts.”

Some of those effects are already evident. American crude oil It has crossed $90 per barrel from $67 a day before the war started. global market index brent It has exceeded $90 per barrel. According to GasBuddy’s national average, gas prices rose to about $3.38 per gallon, up 35 cents from the week before the war.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, was quick to point out in an interview that liquefied natural gas prices have also increased. Although U.S. growth has been modest so far, global LNG supply has declined due to the shutdown in Qatar, one of the world’s top LNG producing countries. Natural gas is the largest electricity generator in the US, which is important as the booming data center industry puts pressure on the electric grid and increases utility costs.

“I think what American families have been feeling most over the past year is their energy bills, utility bills going up,” Huffman said. “A large part of the increase in utility bills is that natural gas is becoming more and more expensive … A large portion of our efforts have been put into LNG exports rather than bill-reducing strategies for American consumers. This problem is exacerbated by this conflict.”

Some Republicans are counting on a quick end to the conflict in Iran to minimize economic damage. Senator John Hoeven, R-N.D., member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Said that controlling energy prices would depend on the US destroying Iran’s ballistic missiles, drones and nuclear capability.

“Once we do that, I think you’ll see oil prices start to go down again because you won’t have that disruption in the Arabian Gulf,” Hoeven said. “But the real key is that we achieve our objectives and then keep oil coming out of the Gulf.”

“I’m talking relatively short term, I’m talking weeks, not months, and I think that’s going to be significant in terms of oil prices,” he said.

But a quick operation in Iran is not certain, and any extended conflict could create an election-year quagmire for Republicans, said Brittany Martinez, executive director of Principles First and a former aide to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

“If energy prices rise or the market remains unstable, affordability becomes a tougher message for Republicans,” Martinez said. “Republicans will argue that projecting strength abroad would prevent greater instability, while Democrats will try to tie any sustained price increases to foreign policy decisions. The real question is whether this turns into a protracted conflict that voters feel is important at their domestic budgets.”

Many believe that military intervention in Iran is likely to be prolonged, including Senator Andy Kim, D-N.J., the national security adviser in the Obama White House. Also included.

When Kim was asked about a potential power vacuum that could keep the United States in the region for a long time, he said, “This administration doesn’t seem to think about it at all.” “The intelligence community has made a whole series of assessments that keep me up at night, and the fact that this White House, I believe, read the same things that I read and still went along with it, I just find it absolutely reckless.”

Complicating matters for the GOP is that the war in Iran is unpopular. A CNN poll released on March 2 found that nearly 60% of those surveyed disapproved of US military action in Iran. This comes as Trump’s economic approval remains underwater: A Fox News poll released on March 4 found that 61% of voters disapprove of Trump’s job on the economy.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said, “We don’t see this as an opportunity, but I think we have a responsibility to inform the American people of the decisions Donald Trump is making.” “He’s sending billions of our tax dollars to the Middle East to fund another war while he’s denying people healthcare and … eliminating nutrition programs.”

Rep. Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican seeking re-election in a district the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter has labeled a “toss up,” said he’s not worried the war could erode the GOP’s affordability message. He pointed to the huge tax and spending bill signed into law last year, an increase in domestic energy production and housing legislation that came out of the House last month as examples of things the party will use to show action on rising costs.

He argued that the war in the Middle East does not necessarily prevent Republicans from continuing to try to bring down prices.

“A more meaningful conversation would be how do we make sure we still work on affordability?” the nun said in an interview. “I think this is the perfect place for us to be.”

But Trump, the “America First” president who campaigned on ending America’s foreign entanglements, risks alienating his base with his Iran attack.

Democrats see the war as proof of what they’ve been telling voters about Trump all along: He doesn’t care about affordability.

“We have a president who campaigned on ending wars forever, and he’s jumped into war without any justification or explanation to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“So it’s one broken promise after another,” DelBene said. “It’s at the expense of the needs of everyday Americans. And I think voters will hold him accountable in November.”