CNN’s Victor Blackwell Battles Senior Biden Official Over Gas Prices: All We’ve Seen Are Record Highs
CNN anchor Victor Blackwell battled President Joe Biden‘s infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu Wednesday, saying that despite administration promises and tapping the strategic reserve, “all we’ve seen since then was a series of record highs.”
The segment on CNN Newsroom began with a clip of former Obama economic adviser and Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warning about a recession “within the next two years.”
“Here’s the unfortunate, painful fact, and it’s true of the U.S. experience and it’s true of the experience of other rich countries like us,” said Summers. “When inflation’s above 4 [percent] and unemployment’s below 4 [percent], you are almost certain to have a recession within the next two years.”
“He was right about inflation when White House officials were wrong,” said Blackwell. “What do you think about this calculation?”
Landrieu, who admitted he himself is “not an economist,” said there’s been disagreement between Summers and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen “about whether things are transitory or whether they last a long time.”
Regarding inflation and gas prices, said Landrieu, “the president and his team have been working hard on this, and there’s a lot of evidence that there’s a lot of success in making sure that we have a really good foundation upon which to try to dig ourselves out of.”
“What’s the evidence of that,” interjected Blackwell.
Landrieu explained:
Well, first of all, the president and his team have produced 8.3 million jobs in the first year that they have been in office, which is the largest number that has been created in the first year of any presidency. Unemployment is as low as it’s been in a long time. Applications for unemployment insurance have been reduced by 90 percent. Jobs are up. Wages are up. Debt at household level is down, and credit card debt is down. That puts us in a strong position to recover, but it does not alleviate the pain.
The president understands the pain that parents have, whether it’s related to baby formula or whether it’s related to the prices of gas. He says this all the time that when he was a kid, if the price of gas went up, they felt it at the kitchen table like all of us do.
Blackwell asked if Biden can take any actions on his own to mitigate inflation.
Landrieu answered:
Well, first of all, you might recall that Larry Summers also agrees that the fed is independent and we need to let them do their job. All the economists, we can argue about what that is, the president expects them to do what is necessary to bring inflation down. And we hope that they do sooner rather than later.
The president has already enacted a massive piece of legislation called the Infrastructure Act, which is designed to actually help rebuild the supply chains and to fix the rails and to fix the roads and to fix the air and to fix the water. On top of that, he released product from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices…
“They certainly didn’t bring down gas prices,” said Blackwell. “He announced that release. Today, gas is $4.67 a gallon.”
Landrieu contended that “the president himself doesn’t control the price of gas. You asked whether or not there was anything that was in his power that he can do.”
“Certainly, he does not control the price of gas, but the president said that releasing from the Strategic Reserve would bring down the price of gas, and all we’ve seen since then was a series of record highs,” replied Blackwell.
Watch above, via CNN.
