‘This Is Economics 101’: Angus King Defends Biden on Senate Floor, Says ‘Supply and Demand’ to Blame for Record Gas Prices
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) attributed record high has prices to the basic economics and post-pandemic economic recover during remarks on the Senate floor Thursday.
Americans are feeling the squeeze at gas stations across the country. The price for fuel has increased every day this week, and it is expected to continue its ascent.
Earlier this week, the price for a gallon of 87 regular eclipsed that of 2008, which occurred during the George W. Bush-era Great Recession.
President Joe Biden, who has banned imports of Russian crude, has blamed the crisis on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin is now in his third week of a war against the people of Ukraine.
According to King, high gas prices are not a result of Putin’s war, Biden’s failures or the economy under former President Donald Trump.
The independent from Maine said the issue of high fuel prices are one of simple supply and demand.
“Why has the price of gasoline gone up?” He asked. “Why did it start going up about the same time that Joe Biden became president? Was it because of the cancelation of the Keystone pipeline?”
“No,” he said, before he noted the pipeline would not be in service now, had Biden not canceled its permit on day one of his term.
“Most of the oil going through the Keystone pipeline was scheduled to be exported,” he said. “So I don’t think that was it. Was it was a pause in leases that wouldn’t have been produced for three or four years? No. there are something like 8,000 leases that are currently not being drilled upon.”
The senator added:
You know what caused gas prices to go up? the extraordinary recovery that the economy went through starting in early 2021, after Joe Biden became president, one of the quickest recoveries in our history from a recession. If you look back to it the recession of 2007 and 2008, you see a slow – I call it a “lazy U” – you see a downward of the recession and then jobs and the economy came back very slowly, over five, six, seven years. the recession recovery from 2021, from the pandemic recession, is a V. And we recovered virtually all the jobs that were lost during the pandemic in the last 14 months.
King noted that the country’s gross domestic product has increased at a record rate.
He expounded:
The economy came back enormously, rapidly and oil was down in 2019 and 2020. Because of the pandemic, demand collapsed. This is economics 101, demand collapsed, the price of oil collapsed, and then the recovery came and the demand increased. But the production didn’t increase. And let’s talk a bit about oil in the United States. In 2021, half of the oil produced in the United States was exported. Did that do anything for our consumers? Did that do anything for the people that were paying higher and higher rates far gas?
“Presidents are always blamed for gas prices,” he concluded. “I’ve never heard one given credit when gas prices are low, but the truth is, the price of gas depends upon the price of oil, and the price of oil depends upon the world market, and the price of oil on the world market depends upon supply and demand.”
Watch above, via C-SPAN.
