Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said President Trump is responsible for rising gas prices, and said that trend has already wiped out the effects of the Republican tax cut.
“Gas prices will roughly cancel out the 2018 consumption boost from the tax cuts,” said the New York lawmaker while standing in front of an Exxon gas station on Capitol Hill. “That’s right, whatever meager benefit working families may have seen from Trump’s tax scam for the rich has been wiped out by the gas prices that president Trump is responsible for.”
Schumer said the tax law and Trump’s decision to abandon the Iran nuclear agreement have led to rising gas prices. He noted that experts say Trump’s re-upping of sanctions on Iran will cut the global oil supply, and oil prices are already rising.
On top of that, the tax cuts will be a “boon” to oil companies that will be able to “rake in billions in profit” even as prices rise. Schumer said the tax cuts have helped the president’s oil company “buddies” pad their profits at the expense of average Americans, and called on Trump to do more to rein in prices.
Trump “time and time again has chosen to side with the biggest corporations,” Schumer said, arguing that his policies “do more harm than good.”
Schumer, joined by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., sent a letter to Trump on Wednesday asking him to put pressure on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to take actions to cut oil prices, not drive them up as they have done over the past several months.
“It’s time for this president to stand up to OPEC on behalf of the forgotten men and women he promised to remember,” Schumer said. “He’s paling around with the Saudis and the UAE, and all these other oil rich countries.”
“Why doesn’t he ask them to their prices so that the prices at the pump can be lower?” he asked. “We haven’t heard a peep from him on this subject. It’s time for the president to buck his oil executive buddies who cash in when oil prices are high and stand up for working Americans.”
OPEC has joined with non-OPEC nations, like Russia, to form a pact over the past year to drive up oil prices by cutting production. Most OPEC nations have been harmed financially by low oil prices over the past three year, driven in part by less demand from the United States due in part to the shale oil boom.
Markey said he is introducing legislation requiring Trump to negotiate with OPEC and Russia to end its agreement restricting oil production to boost prices.
The “OPEC Accountability Act” would force the U.S. trade representative to take action against OPEC members that refuse to agree.
The purpose of the bill is to “put an end of this cartel manipulating markets and harming American consumers,” Markey said Wednesday.
