CNN Rips Biden Getting Rejected By His Fellow Democrats Over Wanting to Suspend Gas Tax: ‘Is It Not Embarrassing?’

A CNN panel ripped President Joe Biden on Thursday over getting rejected by his fellow Democrats over wanting to suspend the federal gas tax for three months amid increasing prices at the pump.

Gas prices on average nationwide are $4.94 per gallon, according to AAA.

Democratic congressional leaders including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have, at best, been lukewarm to the proposal, as they showed on Wednesday.

“We will see where the consensus lies on a path forward for the President’s proposal in the House and the Senate,” said Pelosi.

Schumer said the “most important thing we can do to lower gas prices is crack down on Big Oil’s manipulation of the oil markets.”

“I don’t know that we have the votes,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a close friend of Biden’s, said, “I don’t know whether it will get the votes it needs here in the Senate, but I am talking to my colleagues about that.”

The panel on Inside Politics gave Biden anything but slack over the pushback he’s gotten from members of his own party as it pertains to suspending the federal gas tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon.

“Can you help me here? That a Democratic president, his party’s in trouble. He’s in trouble in an election year,” said Inside Politics host John King. “He has a major policy announcement, and his own party dumps on it within seconds.”

“It’s almost like he should have run it by a couple people like, like call his friend Chris Coons who’s basically the Biden whisperer on the Hill and just run this by them,” said CNN political analyst Jackie Kucinich, who’s also the Washington bureau chief of The Daily Beast. “But no, listen, some Democrats are expressing concern this would hurt the Highway Trust Fund right after they passed all of these infrastructure projects.”

“Also there’s no guarantee oil companies would pass along any savings to the consumers. And you’ve got a lot of Democrats who are saying oil companies are at fault for all of this. So this seems — I don’t know if there was a miscommunication or what this was, but it’s clear this White House wants to do anything to lower the price at the pump or at least look like they’re trying to do something.”

“Should the policy proceedings maybe have happened in private beforehand? Part of Joe Biden’s calling card was I know how to get things done. This is the number one issue for Americans, inflation, gas prices are a big piece of that,” said King. “It’s — is it not embarrassing to the president of the United States for his party right out of the box to say go away?”

Washington Post national political correspondent Olivier Knox noted the resurfaced video of former President Barack Obama lamenting on the campaign trail in 2008 about suspending the gas tax as a gimmick ahead of an election.

“It’s not great for this White House that a three-second Internet search turns up a Barack Obama video heaping scorn on the idea of cutting the gas tax. That’s not great for them,” said Knox. “So there’s some muscle memory in the Democratic Party against this proposal. Yes, they clearly should have done a better job of running this past senators. You don’t want to catch them by surprise because you don’t know how they’re going to react, and it might have smoothed the way a little bit.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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