One Democratic senator said it is “frustrating” that the Biden White House is not supporting her plan to reduce gasoline prices.
Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire has spent the past weeks saying that the Biden administration is not doing enough to help Americans deal with rising gasoline process.
Biden has claimed that pain at the pump is out of his control.
“There’s a lot going on right now but the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term. Nor is it with regard to food,” Biden said last week, according to CNN.
Not a great way to start the weekend, the highest #gasprices ever- the national average for gasoline is now at $5.01 per gallon with 20 states above the $5 mark. Diesel continues to rise as well, and stands at $5.76/gal with 13 states averaging over $6 while Cali stands near $7.
— Patrick De Haan ⛽️📊 (@GasBuddyGuy) June 11, 2022
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Hassan said that is not so.
“What I’ve been pushing for is, among other things, is suspending the gas tax. That helps put some more money back in people’s pockets. I’m pushing the administration to support that. They haven’t yet and that’s frustrating,” Hassan said Friday, according to Fox News.
Will Joe Biden do anything to lower gas prices?
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Hassan and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona proposed a bill in February to suspend the federal gasoline tax when the average price at the pump tops $3.50 a gallon.
The bill would have killed off the 18.4 cents-per-gallon tax for the rest of 2022.
Joe Biden, not Putin, has caused gas prices to reach a 40-year high.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) June 8, 2022
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last week the administration can’t do much about the price of gas.
“Unfortunately, that is the brutal reality,” she said, according to the New York Post.
As the midterm elections approach, the continued spike in prices is a political as well as an economic issue, noted The Washington Post.
“This is a huge economic and political albatross around the neck of the administration, and the difficulty is there really isn’t an easy way to tackle this using the policy tools available to them,” Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, said.
Some fear it could even get worse.
“I’d be on high alert right now to see if the economy succumbs to this latest stab in the heart from higher energy prices,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds. “Realistically, it’ll be a miracle if we don’t go into a recession.”
Regardless of the outcome, Bill Richardson, an energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said efforts such as Biden’s hat-in-hand approach to get more oil from Saudi Arabia is the kind of approach Biden has to explore.
“A president has to try,” he said according to The New York Times. “Unfortunately, there are only bad options. And any alternative options are probably worse than asking the Saudis to increase production.”
Gas prices have more than doubled since President Biden took office.
President Biden’s answer? Beg the Saudis for more oil.
Why not just increase AMERICAN oil production?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) June 6, 2022
As of Saturday, the national average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline stood at $5.004, according to AAA.
Cutting the gasoline tax has been tried at the state level.
As of June 1, New York state cut its gas tax by 16 cents, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul.
When the gas tax cut took effect, gas was selling for an average of $4.934 a gallon, according to WNBC-TV, citing AAA figures.
As of Saturday, according to AAA, the average price in New York state – which had dipped to $4.851 per gallon in the aftermath of the tax cut — has risen to $5.032 per gallon.
