Michele Bachmann’s Plan For $2.00 Gas: Another Great Recession?
Michele Bachmann is promising $2.00 gas. Not surprisingly, she has no idea how to achieve this seemingly impossible goal.
Michele Bachmann made this boastful statement during a campaign appearance yesterday:
Americans will save at the pump if Michele Bachmann is elected president, the Minnesota Republican said Tuesday.
“The day that the president became president gasoline was $1.79 a gallon. Look at what it is today,” she said at an event in Greenville, S.C.. “Under President Bachmann, you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again. That will happen.”
The average price for a gallon of gasoline is currently $3.58 per gallon, according to AAA.
Bachmann didn’t detail how she would cut the price of gasoline, which is tied to the global price of oil.
She also didn’t really discuss the reason why gas prices had fallen under $2.00 per gallon in the late months of 2008, something which this chart of gas prices going back to 1979 makes dramatically clear:
As you can see quite clearly, gas prices where on a sharp upward tick from mid-2007 until mid-2008, and then they dropped precipitously until they reached a level unseen since a brief drop in 2003, and before that unseen since 2001. From 2003 onward, gasoline prices were on a clear upward trajectory, largely because the price of oil itself was also heading upward. Supply and exploration issues are certainly one factor in the price spike, as are tensions in the Middle East, but the largest factor that was driving oil (and gas) prices up during this time was increased demand from nations such as India and China.
What caused the 2008 collapse, then, a collapse so dramatic that it’s echoed when you adjust the price figures for inflation? Obviously, it was the 2008 worldwide financial collapse and recession, with its subsequent decreases in demand, that led gas prices to reach levels we haven’t seen in nearly ten years now. Once the crisis was over and the world economy started to recover, prices started going back up again as demand returned to normal, pre-crisis, levels.
So, that leads to the question of exactly how Michele Bachmann would bring about a world of $2.00 per gallon gas.
Bachmann’s solution, no doubt, involves some radical variation on the GOP’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra, and while it would certainly be advisable for the Federal Government to remove many of the restrictions against off-shore driling and oil shale exploration, it’s fairly clear that expanding exploration drilling isn’t going to have much of an impact on energy prices, especially not in the short term. According to a 2010 report by a division of the Department of Energy, opening the entire outer continental shelf to offshore drilling would have very little impact on the price of gasoline. As the chart below shows, the study analyzed the difference between full offshore drilling (Reference Case) and restriction to offshore drilling (OCS limited case). In 2020, the report found that there would be virtually no impact on gasoline prices. In 2030, US gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower.
So if drilling is unlikely to bring about that $2.00/gallon gas that Bachmann is promising, what would? Well, as I noted back in April, there is one sure way to bring down worldwide energy prices:
Of course there is one thing that is virtually guaranteed to bring the price of oil and gas down. If the economy were to contract again, consumer and business demand for energy would fall, and world prices would decline at least to some extent. Of course, there are plenty of bad things about another recession, and no politician is going to tell the public that the best thing they could do to bring down gas prices is to crash the economy again.
Or at least that’s what I thought in April. Since nothing she’s proposing is likely to bring about the promise she has made, is Michele Bachmann saying that the solution to our energy problems is another Great Recession? Or is it just that she spouted off something without any real idea of how she’d accomplish the goal?
Whichever choice one makes, it doesn’t reflect very well on the candidate.
Price controls. True Republicans, like Nixon, believed in them until the party went all crazy-eyed.
/sarcasm
Invading Iran is still in the playbook.
Obviously she’d pray…
She, like most politicians, adhere to the dictums of P.T. Barnum when addressing their fans…..the American public loves their snake oil….
Seizing Iraqi oil ??!! 😉
She also believe there’s an invisible man in the sky.
Doug gets pretty close to nailing it without actually calling her out… it’s purely an excuse to cut loose any and all current restrictions on oil drilling. Period. Because it will make her lots of money/contributions. Period. There’s no deeper level one need look at than “follow the money”.
Let’s see… 2010…. Doug, I am surprised to see you cite a report released under the auspices of the islamo-socialist-american hating Obamatron. It is just a lie.
Really? Why is that? Having more BP-type spills seems like a good idea to you?
Gas actually was in that range when Bush 43 took office…I don’t remember her complaining during the eight years of increasing prices that preceded Obama. Pretty much the Tea Party M.O. on deficit spending too. It wasn’t a problem until the scary black man took office.
Hell yea. Screw the environment, screw the future. Cheap gas is our only priority.
I want a pony with that $2 gas, Michele.
Doug, I too would like to hear why you think the Feds “to remove many of the restrictions against off-shore driling and oil shale exploration.” I mean this sincerely. Can you argue, using data, that the economic positives from removing those restrictions are worth the environmental downside risk? Maybe they are. Show me, or at least make an argument. I’m interested.
@Rob in CT: Actually, as Doug points out in the article, there really _aren’t_ “economic positives” from opening up drilling. It’s purely because the oil industry wholly owns a large chunk of GOP party leadership. Whether a thing is “good” or “bad” for the US economy is just below beach volleyball on any GOP candidate’s list of Things to Give A Shit About.
Obviously she plans to socialize the oil industry.
Now and then I accuse a certain sort of right-winger to be a Cargo Cultist. This breed believes in a religious way that if they do X then Y will come. We may believe that further drilling Alaska will have a small effect, but we are thinking in economic terms, and looking at actual production estimates.
That’s not the way to think about this. Think instead “Of course drilling Alaska will fix things. Prices were low before the liberals stopped the drilling.” It’s a faith thing.
(BTW Rob, I thought “Pony” also, as I parsed this news.)
If we can put a man on the moon – 6 times was it? – then we can come up with a hydrogen engine that gives enough power and range; and doesn’t cost twice as much as a gasoline powered car. And, as of now, there is no tax on hydrogen! Isn’t that cool!
@racehorse:
Hydrogen engines are easier than finding a cheap hydrogen source. Most is now made from natural gas, which can more cheaply run cars directly.
You guys are all forgetting that the federal fuel tax represents 150% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. If we lower this confiscatory, expansion choking, repressive tax enough, Exxon will have to pay us to take the gas off their hands!
Doug, see this to learn why you are unqualified ask how she will accomplish this.
@Rob in CT: The price dropped right after President Bush said, I am lifting the executive ban on oil drilling. Boom crude prices dropped, OPEC said Here is more oil. Obama got in office and said, I am putting the moratorium back in place and oil jumped back up. If you know you have a monopoly you can charge more. If you know you have competition you have to compete. Also when then dems took control in 2007 they let the EPA go wild and regulate. Gas prices are a direct result of dem policies.
@john personna: I am just wondering here, if gas was 1.23 at 45.00 dollars a barrel how come when one item doubles the cost of the finished good quadrupled? When the price of a spark plug doubles does that mean the price of a lawn mower should double? Yeah I did ni think so.
Why do we allow the price of gas to quadriple because one aspect went up? Did all workers pay also quadruple? Did the cost of lime? The answer is no they did not. What happened was democrats got control of congress and passes stupidity.
When Obama took office, gas prices were in a trough following a price spike of historic proportions. The crash of the economy under Bush also played a role. Prices had nowhere to go but up. Is it surprising that this is too complicated for tea party types to follow? Not really.
@Dave Meyers:
Which time? If you look at this page, there is a long term oil and gasoline price chart. Oil and gasoline prices move together, with some noise, until the 2008 panic.
If (as Anjin says) you are looking at the panic, that is not typical.
Proves she’s a politican, just like Obama, promising things she can’t deliver on.
@rodney dill:
Heh, it’s a whole other scale. This is the most blatant example of “empty and specific promise” I’ve heard since “a chicken in every pot, a car in every driveway.”
@legion:
Well, given that demand for oil (unlike many other things right now) is very healthy, I’m sure there would be *some* economic positives in the form of some extra oil drilling jobs. The affect on the price of gas would, I imagine, be negligible (but non-zero). So I figured that someone could, if they really thought this was important, take reasonable estimates of the amount of oil available (or rather economically viable to go get, at $X/barrel), do some math, and figure out a rough estimate of what the benefit would be. Then we could have a reasonable discussion about whether that is worth the environmental risk.
I guess not, though.
@Dave Meyers:
That’s pretty shallow analysis, given that it completely ignores the fact that oil is a global commodity and we are far from the only driver of demand. Further, unless the oil reserves theoretically available off our coast are far, far, far larger than I’m aware (and economically viable at a lower price point than the current one), it’s unlikely that we can do much to increase the supply. A little, yes, but every time I see someone break down the math of the impact, it comes out to a few cents a gallon for a few years – so little it would hardly be noticeable.
The price of oil rose pretty dramatically under Bush (note: not his fault) then fell around the recession, and has crept back up. It does this. US government policy impact on the price of oil should be marginal. There can be short-term fluctuations triggered by getting into stupid ME wars (Iraq, Libya), but in the long run it’s just a supply/demand thing. We’re talking about supply here, but again, unless there is a staggering amount of oil available and it’s produceable at around today’s price (or lower), it’s not going to do much of anything to the price of oil.
How has the EPA “gone wild” exactly? I keep hearing this claim.
@Rob in CT: True – to a point. Yes, there would be more drilling jobs, but it would amount to a few hundred to a few thousand positions, once the rigs are in place (and there’s no guarantee any of those jobs would go to Americans in the first place). That’s not a lot. And considering the enormous economic and environmental impact of even a single problem at one of those drilling sites, it just doesn’t seem to make economic sense to put this much in resources into creating this small a number of jobs.
Of course, oil out of the ground isn’t much value to any consumers until it’s gone through a refinery, and setting up & manning those is a whole different kettle of fish…
@Rob in CT:
Wikipedia has it: Projected impact on global price
You forgot to mention natural gas is a fossil feul. But wait, didn’t Rick Perry just say he doesn’t believe global warming? Corn ethanol is the same. The energy required to make corn ethanol (including, growing with fertilier using natural gas(!), farm equipment burning diesel) is about the same that ethanol burns to drive cars. This is not to mention the water required to grow those corns (have you heard of the depleting Ogallala aquifer – without it you wouldn’t have the “corn belt”), and the non-point agricultural runoff polution from those corn fields? The list goes on and on. It’s a zero sum game, people. Conservation is the key.
So, what the word is that when this country had gas at 55 cents per gallon, we were in a deep recession? Anybody remember gas wars? Gas got down to the pennies per gallon. The bottom never fell out then. In fact times were pretty good. Then OPEC came along and decided they had a good thing going and wanted to get rich……fast. To them, the western world will pay anything for oil. Especially if they get into a “bidding” war. Now the speculators roll the dice. Get rid of the speculators. Tell OPEC, no more military protection and money. The price will get real……………..fast.
Are you crazy?After the BP oil spill I can’t believe that anyone would be for offshore drilling!Haven’t we screwed up enough of our natural resources as it is?I for one like to visit the beaches on the coast without wading through oil!
As Jimmy Buffett says the coast is clear lets keep it that way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does she actually think she can be President? Does she want her own reality show?
An easy way to bring down the price is to remove Oil from the Commodity Market where speculators have raped the American Peolpe. This can be achieved but her party will stop all of here efforts because of their relationship with Commodity Speculators and their Bank Accounts.
Despite aligning with conservatives, I must say, Ms. Bachmann appears to me to be Palin 2.0. I shudder every time I see a news report on her. Time to get rid of the bozos and get somebody with real ideas in place.
@VFW American:
The “commodity market” is international. We can’t regulate it away from inside the USA.
Its sounds like she is running for senior class president at her high school. Pizza and candy for lunch everyday. This lady could not be more out of touch!!!
@john personna:
That’s what I was thinking of, but we’re not talking about ANWAR here (or at least I wasn’t).
But I’m silly anyway, since I missed the fact that Doug included a link in his post to a projection about the oil price impact of opening up coastal drilling. My bad!
3 cents a gallon is less than 1% of the price. As I suspected, that won’t do squat, so it boils down to the jobs (how many, what will they pay?) versus the environmental impact (hard to hang a pricetag on it, but it WILL cost us something).
My initial impression is that it isn’t worth the risk, and I’ve seen nothing in this thread to change that impression.
@Rob in CT:
For the Cargo Cult, it’s always ANWR. Drill ANWR, free gas for everyone.
sounds like another campaign promise that isn’t going to happen promises promises promises i bet all those oil big wigs are laughing thier arses off at that one drill more thats just more profits for them the best we can hope for is we at least tax them so they don’t pay 0 taxes and get $750,000,000 dollar refunds
I’m going to miss her comedic comments once she’s out of the race. Enjoy the laughs while we can.
This lady is an idiot! the only one with any sense and real ideas to correct this country is RON PAUL! The very fact that the media and the establishment are freezing him out shows his ideas are true change and will take wealth and power for the elite bankers and power brokers in washington. Go to his website and see for yourself what he believes in his ideas are to weighty to explain in 30-60 sound bites for commericial and debates, although the other candidates can do that since they are not really saying anything anyways. Get on the bus and vote for liberty and peace , vote for RON PAUL in 2012.
She can say she can do this, and that she could do that, but doesn’t mean its going to be done.. There are many steps to go through and approvals by congress, and boards that need to be taken before anything like this can happen.
This is neither ‘boastful’ nor ‘an impossible task’. Quite the contrary, I have been saying for months that Obama could pull off a win in the elections by actually DOING this very thing. This is no different than when John F. Kennedy was President and the major steel producers promised him not to raise steel prices – then proceeded to do so after he was elected. Kennedy called the major ‘big boys’ into his office and flat told them that they WILL honor their promise and lower the prices. U.S. Steel changed their tune, and everyone else fell into line behind them. The biggest bonus for Obama (or Bachmann if her people are smarter than Obama’s, as they apparently are) is that he would not need to ask Congress for permission or wrangle with ‘party politics’ – and the bonus for America is obvious, and benefits every sector of the economy. Is there a down-side? Sure….Exxon/Mobil will make ONLY $4 billion dollars a Quarter in profits instead of $11 billion dollars – makes your heart bleed for them, doesn’t it? Are gasoline prices tied to the price of oil, etc…etc…? Sure…but $11 billion in profit in one quarter is obscene by any greedy Wall Street measure. It is high time that someone came out with this idea…kudos’s to Ms. Bachmann. **For the record – I voted for Obama in the election, and was raised as a Republican – however I am 100% independent of either greedy, incompetent political persuasion. It is time for whomever has the vision to see things as they can be, make it happen, and not be content with ‘business as usual’ because clearly that ship has sailed…at least it would have, if it could afford the fuel.
Your solution is to have the Pres call US oil companies into the Oval Office and demand they lower gas prices (from nearly $4 to $2/gallon)?
Hahahahahaha.
@Dennis E. Kocik:
We are past the age when most oil used in the US is brought out of the ground in the US. What you are really asking is for the US companies to buy oil in arabia, bring it here, refine it, and sell it for a loss.
When the OPEC average oil price is over $100 per barrel, gasoline cannot be $2 without someone soaking up a huge loss.
(If anyone is bored, you could probably divide down total US oil company profits to cents per gallon, and see what impact a “non-profit” oil industry would actually have. My guess is not much.)
Wow $2 gas? Should be as successful as the Lightbulb freedom of choice bill that she takes credit for spearheading….that never go passed…eh hem…lol. These candidates remind me of the sleezy car salesman.
@OzarkHibilly: Well how did you feel about going to war against Iraq with thousands of Americans ultimately being killed and hundreds of thousands Iraqi civilians getting killed under the influence of a forged letter that portrayed Saddam Hussein as seeking yellow cake from Niger? Didn’t say a word, right?
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,463779,00.html
How about letting her and the TEA party hold OPEC hostage until they lower the price of oil?
the idiots sure do come out when it is getting close to election time.
Does she actually think she has a snow balls chance in h$ll of getting elected ?
I am wondering, where is Sarah…when is she going to start her big campaign ??
How many Oil Companies does she think, will be lining up to extract Oil in Alaska’s Wilderness, for $40.00/ barrel?
@Tom:
Wow, Can we all enter into Ms. Michele brain, and play reality TV.
This woman obviously doesn’t live in the real world, maybe its the pain pills for her migraines, but something is very seriously wrong with her view on the reality of real life and dealing with corps bigger than her severely sprayed hairdo.
As much as this pains me to type this she might ultimately be worse than Bushie, at least his daddy and cheney’s heiny kept him partially in line.
Does she really believe that she can shake her butty at the oil corps and in response they will go down. Yes Pres. Obama needs to grow a set of balls rapidly as forming committees implys lack of skill to act, but he is doing almost the best that he can with the mess that he was handed and with the GOP’s agenda of SAY NO!
This lady is a joke! how did she ever get elected to anything? The people she represents should be embarassed that she represents them! If gas goes below $3.00 a gallon it will be a miracle!
sounds to me like someone plans to nationalize the oil companies
Michelle bachman makes Dubya and Palin look like Rhodes Scholars…
SHE’S AN IDIOT! AND WHAT’S WORSE IS THAT MOST AMERICANS WILL BELIEVE HER PACK OF LIES AND SHE MIGHT JUST GET ELECTED AND THEN THE PRICE OF GAS WILL GO UP UP UP NOT DOWN DOWN DOWN..
Why not drill everywhere there is oil. The fact is there is only so much oil to be had. It isn’t being made anymore. If drilling for the oil would help lower the price of oil, what is wrong with that. The fact that there was an oil spill is no more important then the fact that we have bad storms every year. Along with fires and earthquakes. All of these are a bad things but we live through them. They don’t stop making cars because some of them wreck and kill people. With the way they are working to replace oil, why put ourselves in the position of not being able to afford gas while oil is available until oil can be replaced.
Dear Mrs. Bachmann, There are way’s of doing this but congress, wall street, big oil, banks ect. are not going to like you but it will fix the economy & the government will get it’s tax base back as the economy grows.
You need to put back the regulations that were deregulated in 1998 & 1999.
!. I’m talking the deregulation of commodities in 1998.
2. Repeal The Glass Steagall act.
These were put into place during the great depression to keep the country from ever having another depression. Congress just had to mess with them and look where we are today.
No jobs, Jobs are created by entrepreneur’s and not large corporations. Entrepreneur’s are not going to come out and play in this environment as everyone’s broke and not buying as the price of everything is outrageous. Large corporation’s are only worried about there bottom line for there investors. They will fire 1000’s of workers just to be able to say ( Gee, Look how good we did this quarter). People that lost jobs and homes also have children that are living in poverty or below poverty levels right now & were talking like 15 million children right here in the US.
The Titanic is going down, do you think you can save it or is there anyone out there willing to save it?
@Doug Dearingert:
Did you miss the numbers? Estimated THREE CENTS A GALLON drop in price if we opened the entire continental shelf to drilling. Put that up against the changes of a big leak. You think that’s worth the risk? I don’t.
@Rick:
Rick: That’s exactly what I was thinking…although most used car salesmen are smarter and more in touch with the prospective sucker (er.. ah…audience).
@Rob in CT: The USA only has 2% of the total oil reserves in the world. Do people really think that drilling in USA will relieve gas prices. The conservatives are only trying to help out the wealthy oil producers for more easy money “donations”. When is somebody going to tell the American people the truth. The wealthiest 1% run this country with political contributions and other assorted monies for other bribes.
You people are Socialist and trying to destroy Capitalism and the Democracy of the United States. “Socialism sounds great until you run out of other peoples money'”.
This country has enough oil and natural gas for at least the next 100 yrs but more likely 200 yrs. Plenty of time to develop new energy technology.
@bob gammell: Look the facts up before you start telling intelligent people about what you THINK get the data then you can make an intelligent statement based on facts not fiction.
http://m.cbsnews.com/fullstory.rbml?feed_id=0&catid=1329941&videofeed=36
This technology has been around since 1800’s. It could be done by local farmers in each state. Other forms of bio- diesel could be used as well. It could sell for about $1.50-60.
@bob gammell<
Mr. Gammell:
Where are these proven oil & gas reserves in the USA? Tell me, so we can buy them up, before anyone else finds out.
Reminds me of the Bar sign–"Free Beer Tomorrow!"
@Rob in CT: That is exactly what Harry Truman would do if he was president. Truman would not let this country be held hostage by the big oil companies.
Nixon promised an investigation of the big oil companies during the ’73 oil crisis, but suddenly the Watergate hassle popped up. Coincidence?
The thing I love so much about the political season is how hungry the American public (and the mainstream media) is for B.S. Michelle Bachmann is a pretty little gal who believes the world is only 5000 years old. She also believes, like a number of other fundamentalist politicians that we are in the end times. You know, the chosen ones get to go, and everyone else is screwed. Why are we so enamored with this nonsense.
There’s something inherently sick in the American psyche that allows us to swallow all this, and with the Presidency at stake. How do these politicians seem to get a free pass? They have big money behind them. So what. Earth 5000 years old.. no questions… end times… no questions.. $2 gas..no questions… just another fairy tale.
@bob gammell: Let me explain to you what socialism is. Socialism is the control of all economic assets by the government. Look Cuba and Look at China around 30 years ago. That is socialism. Now under your scholarly definition of socialism, possibly supplied by Glenn Beck (college drop out) or Rush Limbaugh (college drop out, one misses a lot of details when they depart higher learning) the US military is most expensive socialist military in the world (people supplying the defense for others = socialism). From what comic book did you get the US has 100 years worth oil. Have you not read that oil consumption is increasing around the world with modernization. But what you have not been told is that oil companies sell crude on the world market, not to countries. Oil in the US would be sold to China or France or any other country. There are no US laws preventing this. Sorry, you have been scammed. Drilling in the US only helps the oil companies find more reserves to sell around the world and increase profits. It does nothing for US energy prices. Sorry, but that’s business. Money has no friends or long term loyalties. Now you know.
i’m sorry but michele bachman is stupid.. that will never happen
On the plus side, when they stop printing money the overinflated American economy will collapse, and the world will return to the depression that it has been in since 2008.
Then petrol will be $2 a gallon.