Democrats Panic As Soaring Gas Prices Hurt Midterm Prospects

Democratic lawmakers are starting to go into panic mode as rising gas prices threaten to sink them even further in the midterms. While the administration has no control over gas prices, they are being blamed extensively by those on the Right, and Democrats don't have any form of effective messaging to counter these false arguments. Republicans are capitalizing on what's happening, and Democrats are too scared to do anything, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Democrats right now are in panic mode because gas prices continue to soar with the national average as of Tuesday of this week sitting at $4 and 17 cents per gallon. Now, as our good friend, Joshua Holland actually pointed out on Twitter, the media likes to hype the $6 gas, right? Putting pictures of those up, doing stories from gas stations where it says 5.99 a gallon. But the national average of course is $4 and 17 cents, which as you can tell, is almost $2 lower than that $6 gallon gas that the media keeps hyping. But nevertheless, even at $4 and 17 cents, Democrats are worried. Not worried that they're not doing anything about it, although they do have one terrible idea, I'll get to in a moment, but they're worried because Republicans have already jumped on this opportunity and of course they're blaming president Biden for the gas prices. They're trying to say that shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline is what did this.

Even though, as we all know, the Keystone XL pipeline wasn't even functional. There was nothing flowing through it and what would have been flowing through it was not gasoline for your vehicle. It was tar sands oil from Canada, headed to the Gulf Coast to be loaded up on tankers and sold on the international market. That's where that would have gone had it been completed. It would've created 33 permanent US jobs. Nobody here would've benefited from it. It was a stupid idea. Let's move on. Nevertheless, Republicans are blaming that, Republicans are blaming Biden, even though the president of the United States has no control whatsoever over gas prices. And they're omitting the fact that right now oil companies are watching their profits soar 60 to 80% higher than what they were at this time last year and that's not a coincidence, folks. There is a massive amount of price gouging happening right now with these oil companies simply because they can.

We're also, let's not forget, in Spring Break season, which means more people driving. And what happens every year right around this time? Gas prices go up because demand goes up. Once again, simple economics. Oil companies look at this, they understand we can raise our prices, people will pay more because they wanna travel for Spring Break. Right? All the COVID restrictions have pretty much been lifted everywhere. People are traveling. They're spending money on gas and the companies always cash in on this. Now the bigger problem of course is that this is being blamed on the Democrats, which is completely unfair, but it's something they have to deal with and they don't know how. That's why they're in the panic mode. So the only, the only plan they've come up with and we see this at the federal level right now, we've also seen it in some states proposing this, is let's repeal the gasoline tax, at least temporarily.

You know, so you can save 15 cents per gallon. Ooh, which means if you fill up your 20 gallon tank, you could save $3 a week because the average American fills up their gas tank between 45 and 55 times per year. So even if they were to save $5 per fill up, that amounts to $275 per year, trust me folks, I actually sat and did all this math yesterday. It's nothing. That is a pittance. It does nothing to actually solve or address the problem. What it does do, however, is it starves much needed programs of that money that they get from the gas tax.