An opinion piece from Roy Blunt?You know that Biden's former boss actually said the following:
OBAMA REACHES ENERGY GOAL: “GRADUAL ADJUSTMENT” OF GAS PRICES
On June 19, 2008, then-Senator Obama said he “would have preferred a gradual adjustment” of gas prices. On January 19, 2009, the day before President Obama was inaugurated, Americans paid $1.85 per gallon of regular gasoline. Today, (FEBRUARY 23, 2012_ families and small businesses pay $3.59 per gallon of regular gasoline. According to the President’s plan, gas prices have undergone a “gradual adjustment” since he took office. There has been a 94 percent increase in the price of gasoline over the first three years of the Obama presidency.
President Obama’s energy plan is to increase, not decrease, energy costs. Just ask the President and the energy team he hired.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal in 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Obama Reaches Energy Goal: “Gradual Adjustment” of Gas Prices
www.rpc.senate.gov
Gingrich said Obama wants gasoline prices to get to the European levels of $9 or $10 a gallon, but that “he just wants it to be gradual.” But that’s not what Obama said. Rather, when asked in 2008 about then-$4 per gallon gasoline prices, and whether that could be a good thing to encourage people toward alternative energy, Obama responded that he “would have preferred a gradual adjustment” because “the fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.”
He said nothing of wanting to goose gasoline prices to European levels, gradually or otherwise.
Romney has repeatedly claimed Obama said during the 2008 campaign that under his energy policy, energy prices would “skyrocket.” “And they have,” Romney said. But Obama was talking about electricity, not gasoline.
And the cap-and-trade plan he endorsed to limit carbon emissions — which died in the Senate in 2009 — included provisions aimed at protecting consumers from higher prices.
Gingrich repeatedly has cited a comment Energy Secretary Steven Chu made in 2008 about wanting to boost the price of gasoline to encourage fuel conservation. But Chu made that remark before the 2008 election and before Chu became energy secretary.
Upon joining the Obama administration, Chu said it would be “completely unwise to want to increase the price of gasoline.”