Biden Commerce Secretary: Nothing We Can Do to Lower Gas Prices

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show.

BUCK: That was the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, on the price of gas, which is about to bust through $5 a gallon, nationally. It’s just pennies away from that right now. If you live in California, New York… I think the highest gas prices right now in the country are California, the Pacific Northwest and then actually, saw this today, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, some of those states have very high gas prices right now.

CLAY: It’s over $8 in some of these places, Buck.

BUCK: If you’re somebody, especially you’re watching your budget closely, you’re an employee who is paid an hourly wage, this really hurts. And there’s no way around it, right? It hurts.

CLAY: And it makes you angry every time you have to see those ticking numbers. It just makes you angry. I know the feeling.

BUCK: And Democrats know this is the problem, which is why depending on the day, it’s, “Don’t worry, Biden is on it,” to today, it’s, “Well, we’ve done all we can do it’s not his fault, it’s the Putin price hike.” When we say they’ve got nothing, they really mean it. They basically got nothing. They’re doing a Defense Protection Act for solar panels. Meanwhile, on the gas side of things, and I think in part, even if they took action… Let’s say they wanted to silence critics like you and me on this issue.

And the Biden administration sat down with people that actually know how to read a balance sheet, actually have run businesses and understand the energy sector — which is the fossil fuel energy sector, the real 80%-plus of our energy needs — and it’s like, “What should they do?” They won’t do those things to even silence critics and show that they are willing to take action. Maybe it takes six months or 12 months to bring down the price, but they could say, “Hey, guys we’re doing it,” because the environmental lobby and donors won’t keep those cash flows going, going into the midterm and beyond.” So they want to talk about special interest? That’s a special interest for you.

CLAY: Worse than that, Buck, a lot of these people are actually cheerleading higher gas prices.

BUCK: Oh, yes.

CLAY: Because that’s the talking point that the Senator Stabenow from Michigan used yesterday, which is (summarized), “Look at me in my electric vehicle! I can just drive past and I don’t have to worry.” Yes, you spent 60K on that electric vehicle. If you have 60K for a car, you’re not worried about the price of gas anyway.

BUCK: This is yet another time where we’re arguing with the irrational. At its heart, this issue, this problem of gas, fossil fuel, climate change, the same mentality where we sit there and say, “Hey, you didn’t really think that double masking was going to protect you,” right? “Yes, they do believe this!” They also really think that climate change is an existential threat to the planet. That’s in the background of all of this. Not all Democrats, but a fair number of them, enough Democrats. And so, Clay, we are arguing with irrationality, which makes it almost impossible to gain any ground, because, to your point, some of them think secretly, “Yeah, I like this high gas price because it means we’ll push forward into the Green New Deal era.”

CLAY: Yep. That’s their argument is that as gas prices go up, it makes other energy sources not seem as expensive, because most of those are more expensive right now than coal, gas — or, certainly, nuclear power would be — and so they actually welcome it. Solar, wind power, electric, all of it is, in theory, helped by high gas prices, even if it destroys many people in America’s economic situation in the process.