Obama's gas price problem

7 Gas Facts Obama Cannot Escape

President Barack Obama cannot escape the following seven gas-related facts:

1. In September 2008, Barack Obama’s”Nobel-prize winning physicist” of an Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, told the Wall Street Journal: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

2. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama admitted that, like his future Energy Secretary Mr. Chu, he believed that high gas prices would be a good thing because they would force Americans to ween themselves off of oil, but that he would have “prefered a gradual adjustment.”

3. On January 19, 2009, the day before Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, gas prices were $1.84 a gallon. As of February 20, 2012 a gallon of gas cost $3.59.

4. As Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson points out, “Offshore drilling permits are being issued at less than half the rate of the previous administration. The average number of leases issued on public lands is less than half than during President Clinton’s term.”

5. In 2008, Barack Obama seemed perfectly comfortable with soaring energy prices if they meant curbing green house gas emissions. As Mr. Obama confessed: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

6. As seen in the video below, Obama’s own 2008 campaign rallies actually cheered higher gas prices because they would “force us to think about changing the culture to create more emphasis on mass transportation.” Following the sustained applause, then candidate-Obama proceeded to laud Europe (not unlike his future Energy Secretary Steven Chu) for its rail system.

7. Try as he might, President Obama’s campaign will try to distance themselves from the fact that a central pillar of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign was a pledge to reduce the “pain at the pump” caused by high gas prices. However, videos such as the one below reveal the extent to which Mr. Obama promised that, if elected, he would bring down the cost of gas for “everyday Americans.”

Missing no opportunity to invoke class warfare, Mr. Obama said: “For the well-off in this country, high gas prices are mostly an annoyance. But to most Americans, they are a huge problem, bordering on a crisis. Here in Indiana, gas costs $3.60 a gallon.”

That is almost the identical price as gas today, except that gas prices today are the highest they have ever been at this time of year before the summertime gas price spike takes place.

Try as he might, Mr. Obama will not be able to escape these facts. But voters in 2012 should hardly be surprised by the skyrocketing costs of fuel. After all, Mr. Obama telegraphed as much from the start.