When Barack Obama took office in 2009 under the guise of “hope and change,” gasoline was about $1.84 a gallon. Since then, he has reduced foreign importation of crude without increasing domestic production rapidly enough to make up for the loss, and has left us with an 880,000 barrel-a-day shortfall on oil supplies. Moreover, he nixed the Keystone Pipeline in January of this year, and when the Republicans in Congress took up the cause and pushed construction of the pipeline anyway, Obama successfully urged Democrats in the Senate to stand with him. The Democrats obliged, and the Keystone Pipeline went down in 56-42 vote on March 8.
By the way, the pipeline would have carried 800,000 to 900,000 barrels of oil a day to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Enter Steven Chu, PhD. In September 2008 Chu said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe.” At the time, he said that gasoline “was $6.78 in Greece, $8.24 in Italy, and $9.39 in the Netherlands.” He believed that raising prices that significantly would finally provide the impetus needed to convince people to trade their trucks and SUVs for the little go-carts the French and Chinese drive.
By the way, as maddening as Chu’s statements are, Barack Obama saw something he liked in them. Thus he elevated Steven Chu to the post of Secretary of Energy in January 2009.
The bottom line: We are fast approaching Europe in the price we pay for gasoline, and there’s no part of “hope and change” that seems directed at preventing that from happening. The price of a gallon of gasoline is at its highest national average for March in American history, $3.87 (average), yet it is well over $4 in many places and will soon reach $5.
If I were a Republican running for national office this fall, I’d put up billboards around gas stations with this simple message: “Obama Rejected the Keystone Pipeline, and All I Got was $5 a Gallon Gasoline”