Price of gas when Obama took office: $1.81
Many Facebook commenters instinctively suspect that something is wrong with the figure, that the price of gasoline could not possibly have been so low just three years ago. To some, it must therefore be B.S.
Thanks to the Internet, however, we can actually look things up. The U.S. Energy Information Administration keeps records of the prices of petroleum. You can see similar historical gas price charts at GasBuddy.com.
As it turns out, the figure is true enough. Look at this graph:
But now look at the six months before Obama took office. The price dropped from $4.09 in July to just $1.69 in December. The price of gasoline was actually higher under President Bush than it has ever been since — yet it suddenly dropped like a rock in the months before President Obama took office.
What was happening during that time which might account for such a price drop?
It’s funny how just three years after the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, many Americans have already forgotten how disasterously Bush’s presidency ended and instead blame Obama for any residual discomfort. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Update, 2/23/2012:
You can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their 3-point plan for $2 gas. And I’ll save you the suspense. Step one is to drill and step two is to drill. And then step three is to keep drilling. (Laughter.) We heard the same line in 2007 when I was running for President. We hear the same thing every year. We’ve heard the same thing for 30 years.
Well, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. (Applause.) That’s a strategy to get politicians through an election.
As the New York Times has reported, Newt Gingrich is one of the candidates shrieking the loudest about oil prices — even though his drilling plans would do virtually nothing to affect the market:
A study in 2009 by the government’s Energy Information Administration found that with unlimited offshore drilling, the country would produce 500,000 more barrels a day, but on the world market, that would translate to prices of only 3 cents a gallon less for American drivers.
If you wonder just how global gas prices really are, take a look at a chart of gas prices in six European countries and the USA from 1996 through October of last year. Gas prices in all of these countries mirror each other almost perfectly the entire 16 years. They don’t just go up or down in the US because of who is president here. They go up or down all over the world.
Update, 3/8/2012:
But when the president is a Republican like George W. Bush, Fox News insists that presidents have very little control over gas prices.
LOL. 36 months in to this (24 months of which the Democrats could do ANYTHING they wanted), $4,609,354,739,527 more in debt, and a 12.2% real unemployment rate your still talking about the Republicans ruining the economy. Yeah, things are sooooo much improved with the Democrats in charge.
It’s so funny because before the last Presidential election there were a couple of sayings that are more true than ever 1) Don’t pizz on my leg and tell me it’s raining 2) You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
Stop watching PMSNBC so much and perhaps you’ll see what is really happening to your country under the Democrats. It’s a disaster – an unmitigated disaster.
Where did you get this information? the blog was nice enough to cite its sources. why dont you do the same?
How typical of a left-wing blog to absolve a failed president of blame for the woes we’re dealing with as a nation, rather than holding our current Commander-In-Chief accountable. We’re nearing the end of this president’s term, and we’re STILL blaming his predecessor? Even though Obama has accumulated more debt in his term than ALL prior presidents from 1776-2009 combined; even though we had our credit rating dropped for the first time IN HISTORY.
Is Obama solely responsible for the sharp rise in gas prices? No. Has he helped the situation? NO! Why is it that real unemployment is close to twice the ACTUAL 8.3% that our government tells us it is, and our economy is still teetering on collapse, and yet gas prices are miraculously higher than they were when Bush left office?
If we’re to accept the logic that gas prices plummeted under Bush because the economy collapsed, shouldn’t the fact that gas is close to $4 nationally lead to the conclusion that we’re experiencing near record growth? Yet GDP is anemic at best, inflation is growing, unemployment is nowhere CLOSE to the Bush years, and we haven’t even reached Memorial Day.
The REAL truth is that this administration is the most radically anti-oil of any prior administration, thus oil speculators have driven the price of gas absurdly high because they know that we won’t tap into our own resources at a substantial enough level to lead to significant domestic production; couple that with the obvious fact that we won’t open new oil refineries at home, and you have a set-up that leads to us remaining dependent on foreign oil, and with the Iranian threat mounting, global fears of short supplies continues to grow.
But hey…..lets just blame Bush. It’s easier than holding Obama accountable.
Well today gas prices are back at that level or near it, and the economy is better. This was just another example of Repub blame for what their president did. And I see below my post that RichardW blames the post ecletion deficits on President Obama. That is such bunk! Almost all that debt is do to the recovery from the subprime meltdown. When tax revenues in a country fall, deficits increase. We were stuck with a financial disaster and low tax receipts because of stupid tax law changes and even stupider wars that had to be paid for. So the critiscism is bunk as it usually is.