Fetterman: To fight inflation, let's make more stuff in America

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman
·4 min read
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Across Pennsylvania, people are getting squeezed. We're paying more at the grocery store, more at the pump, and more almost everywhere.

I doubt that my opponent, millionaire celebrity Mehmet Oz, feels a change in price when he's filling up his gas tank — if he even pumps his own gas at all (they don't let you do that in Oz's native New Jersey). I don't think he has to worry about his gas or grocery bill, and probably doesn't even notice if it's more than it used to be.

When I fill up my Dodge RAM, it's costing a hell of a lot more than it did a year ago. When Gisele and I go shopping for groceries at Giant Eagle, almost everything we buy costs more.

All of our families are dealing with this. In June, the Consumer Price Index saw the largest jump in consumer prices in 41 years, with inflation at 9.1 % compared to the previous year. Inflation is hitting families across the commonwealth.

But what’s happening isn't just random. It's plain wrong.

On June 12, gas prices hit a record high of $5.07 per gallon in Pennsylvania, an outrageously high price that is impacting families across Pennsylvania. But the truth is, if it wasn't for the greed of oil companies, prices likely wouldn't be this high.

In fact, the last time a barrel of crude oil cost as much as it does now was in July 2014, but at that point, a gallon of gas only cost about $3.54. Oil companies don't need to be charging this much for gas — they're just doing it to make excess profits.

While people across Pennsylvania were paying over $5 a gallon for gas, companies like Shell, Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil were all raking in record-breaking profits, lining their CEOs' and shareholders' pockets. In just the first three months of 2022, 28 of the largest oil and gas producers made over $100 billion in profits. It's hard to even conceptualize how much money that is.

In this file photo, Alexandra Nefedov, left, is helped by Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman during an outreach event on Oct. 14, 2020, in Erie. A variety of food and personal-care items were given to families by Price Rite Marketplace, partnering with Bethany Outreach Center and Feed the Children. More than 40 volunteers provided a case of water, 25 pounds of food and 15 pounds of essentials to 800 families who were pre-identified by Bethany Outreach. Fetterman was joined by his wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman.

But don't just take it from me, take it from the companies themselves. Chevron says the company is "generating excess cash"; Exxon says they're getting an "advantage from the market"; and BP says that the rising price of oil is helping their bottom line. What does that actually look like? In the past year, Exxon's profits doubled; Shell's tripled; and Chevron's quadrupled.

That's what I mean by record profits.

It's gross, and deeply unpatriotic, for the big oil companies to be rolling around in cash while charging us $5 per gallon for gas.

Instead of raising costs at the pump, these oil companies should be working to help drive prices down, even if it means their CEOs make a little bit less. Or, God forbid, just make the same millions of dollars as they made last year.

And if we're going to be serious about bringing down gas prices, we need to suspend the federal gas tax to provide immediate relief for people at the pump. We should also continue to use American oil — and produce and invest in more American energy.

But inflation isn't only impacting us at the pump. It's everywhere. So it's not just energy we should be making here at home. It's everything.

More American energy, more American manufacturing, more American goods. And more American jobs.

We should be ramping up production across industries, increasing capacity and supply to bring down prices across the board.

Making more stuff here in America would mean prices wouldn't spike every time there's a problem overseas. We don't need to be outsourcing any more jobs and production to China. And we don't need to be shouldering the burden when other countries enter into conflicts or declare deranged wars, like Russia's Putin did in Ukraine, which contributed to prices skyrocketing.

We can use American energy to drive down prices at the gas pump for American workers. And we can use American workers to drive down the price of everything, for everyone.

This isn't a radical proposal. It's basic common sense.

Pennsylvania's workers can compete with anyone in the world. We can do it all right here: drive down prices, create good-paying union jobs, and finally stop our dependence on foreign sources of energy and production.

But to get these common sense solutions, we need real leaders who get it. And let's be clear: I don't think that Mehmet Oz is connected to the struggles that Pennsylvanians are facing every day. He's a millionaire television doctor who is a resident of  New Jersey. While paying an extra $10, $20, or $30 for gas likely means nothing to him, it matters to the rest of us.

Pennsylvania deserves better. We deserve a senator who actually gets it, a real Pennsylvanian who understands the pain that families are feeling across this commonwealth. We need real solutions — not a celebrity's vanity project —because right now, Pennsylvania families can't afford anything less.

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate running to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Fetterman says return to U.S. manufacturing, energy to fight inflation