Republicans vs. Democrats on Gas Prices

Crossposted at Truth and Reason

This chart was put together by Republican whip Roy Blunt illustrating the vast differences between Republicans’ and Democrats’ ideas to lower gas prices.

Blunt’s office adds this footnote:

Methodology: Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes. For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60.

Also notice that neither party includes in their plan a reduction in federal taxes on a gallon of gasoline. Those “big oil” companies only make around $0.08 per gallon profit. And they provide a service too. The government takes twice the amount big oil gets, $0.16 per gallon, and government doesn’t provide anything for that two-fold amount. So, since “big government” doesn’t care about the American people, free enterprise will have to step in and do the job, again. At least the ideas proposed by Republicans enable the free market to work. In contrast to the Democrats plan, which include more big government and substantially less savings.

Bottom line: Republicans: Win - win. Democrats Win (government) - Lose (people).