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After hitting $5 a gallon in June, gas prices have fallen precipitously. The national average for regular gasoline is now around $3.30 and up 13 states the average is below $3, where the national average could be by Christmas. If your car has a 15-gallon tank, that means you’ll soon be paying just $45 to fill up instead of the $75 it cost you this summer. What a relief!
This is a political triumph for President Biden, a direct result of his actions. Even his Republican opponents are lining up to commend him for heeding their earlier criticisms now that he’s slashed prices at the pump and put more money in the pockets of hard-working Americans.
Everything in the second paragraph is, of course, fictional. Biden is not responsible for bringing gas prices down, any more than he was responsible for them rising in the first place. And Republicans are definitely not praising him for it or anything else.
But when prices were high, they couldn’t stop repeating that it was all Biden’s fault. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising demand from a revived economy initially pushed up gas prices, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made the Democrats’ “out-of-touch” policy responsible for. “This is by design,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, claiming gas prices rose because Biden had a secret plan to “reduce our energy independence.”
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Other Republicans agreed. Some started call it “Biden’s Gas Migration.” Conservatives even sold stickers with a picture of Biden pointing the finger and the words “I did that!” for angry petrol buyers to attach to petrol pumps.
This was all based on two ideas: first, that Biden wanted gas prices to go up, which is just plain idiotic (wouldn’t a sinister villain like him at least want prices to stay low to shore up his approval ratings?), and second, that Biden had it in his power to set those prices.
Catherine Rampell: Excited about falling gas prices? Be careful with your desires.
In recent years, as in earlier times when gas prices were rising, fact-checkers have dutifully declared that Republican claims were false. In general, the President can do very little to drive prices up, much less to bring them down. The reason they are falling now has to do with fears of a recession coupled with lower demand in China.
Unfortunately, by making a big show of trying to do something about it, Biden likely contributed to the belief that he could control gas prices. He called for gas companies to investigate “whether illegal behavior is costing families at the pump.” and spilled oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But even people who generally support him (like me) have pointed out that although a number of presidents have taken this step in the past, the release of oil from the strategic reserve has at most a tiny and temporary impact on overall supplies may have.
And in the news media, those occasional fact-checks have been inundated with a barrage of reports such as “Rising prices pose a political challenge for Biden.” These were full of quotes from Republicans saying it was Biden’s fault and driven by the assumption that blaming the President for gas prices is routine and reasonable, even if a line in the 12th paragraph might explain, that he had nothing to do with you.
Every American who owns an electric car or a plug-in hybrid knows the long-term solution to the gas price problem: Away from fossil fuels. If you drive a Hyundai Ioniq or a Tesla (which conservatives think is cool now that Elon Musk became a right troll), you don’t care about the price of gas.
While electric cars still make up a small portion of the market, sales have been growing steadily and will almost certainly continue to grow, particularly because the Anti-Inflation Act included provisions designed to encourage the manufacture and sale of electric vehicles. Still, most cars on the road will run on petrol for some time to come. Which means we will continue to worry about gas prices.
So now, while everyone is a little quieter, let’s make a promise to ourselves and each other that the next time we raise prices, which is bound to happen, we’ll try not to be so stupid about this issue.
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