Speaker Pelosi recently appeared with Larry King to discuss the rise in gas prices, but she doesn’t seem to pump her gas very often. She’s off on the price by about $1.00 per gallon. Remind me again, who’s out of touch with ordinary Americans? It might be helpful to review the climbing price of gas a little, since Speaker Pelosi seems to think President Bush is responsible. She says that when President Bush took office, gas prices were ‘a dollar something’ per gallon. According to the Energy Information Administration, the national average retail price — all grades, all formulations — was $1.51 per gallon in January, 2001. By January, 2007, when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, that price had climbed to $2.21 per gallon — an increase of 70 cents per gallon. Now we’re up to $3.56 per gallon — an increase of an additional $2.05 per gallon. So to the extent that you apportion blame based on ‘who’s watch’ the price rise took place under, gas prices rose 46% in the 6 years of the Bush administration before the Democratic Congress took power. They’ve risen an additional 135 percent in the 15 months since the Democrats took power. It seems the only logical thing for the president to do is to unilaterally restore Republicans to power, but I suspect Pelosi would object. No worry though: the Democrats have a commonsense plan to get prices back under control. Perhaps some day they’ll share it with the rest of us.
