Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm not your host Sarah Isger. This is Declan Garvey again,

editor of the Morning Dispatch, and today we're going to talk about energy. The national average price

of a gallon of regular gas is $4.95 as we're recording this podcast, and much higher than that

in many parts of the country, including where I fill up my tank in Washington, D.C.

Other than a few days last week when the national average surpassed $5 per gallon, Americans,

at least nominally have never paid more at the pump, and it's wreaking havoc on the country,

both economically and politically. Voters routinely tell pollsters that inflation is the biggest

problem currently facing the United States, and energy is among the biggest drivers of those

price increases. You're seeing the effects on gas station billboards as you drive around town,

but you're also seeing it at the grocery store, and when you're online shopping, and when you're

buying your plane tickets, and when you crank up the AC this summer. If energy is more expensive,

that means it's more expensive for companies to produce and transport all of their goods,

and those added costs are going to filter through to the consumer.

So to tackle inflation, we need to get oil prices under control, and to do that,

we need to understand why they're so high in the first place. That's why I'm thrilled about the

two guests that we have lined up for the show today. Leslie Byer is the CEO of the Energy Workforce

and Technology Council in Houston, which represents more than 450 companies in the oil field services

and equipment industry. Before that, she spent 15 years in Washington, D.C., working in the Senate

and White House, and on multiple presidential campaigns. Our second guest, Skanda Umernoth,

is the executive director of Employee America, a new think tank focused on macroeconomic policy.

Prior to that, he was an economist at MKP Capital Management, and an analyst at the Federal Reserve

Bank of New York. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think it got really deep on a really

...