What will Barack Obama do about the price of gasoline if he is elected President?

Question

Barack Obama was recently asked what he would do about the price of gasoline if he is elected President of The United States of America.

Barack Obama replied that it was unfortunate that the price of gasoline had risen so rapidly.

Barack Obama said that he would have preferred that the price of gasoline rise over a longer period of time so that people could adjust to the price rise.

From that response it sounds like Barack Obama does not plan to do anything about the high price of gasoline.

Does anyone know of any competent, workable proposals that Obama has made to get the price of gasoline back down to affordable levels?

Answer 1

He will do absolutly nothing.

Answer 2

Actually the president of the united states CAN do something to stop the insane raise of petrol prices, because the golf countries doubled the production as well as the export but still the prices are getting high, what he can do is to shut down OPEC and each country that produces oil can sell it directly to whoever wants to buy...only the president can do something like this.....if the prices rise a bit more the world including the golf countries will start riding skateboards to work since the prices are insanely high in UAE and in Saudi Arabia.

Answer 3

There is nothing he can do. He is running for President. Not Federal Wizard King! The price is the result of market forces, mixed in with a bit of mindless speculation in the commodities market. Anyone who tinkers with market forces does so at great peril. President Nixon put in mandatory price controls. It led to his leaving inflation to Gerald Ford when he resigned as President and skewed things so badly that Jimmy Carter's administration was hit with the twin nightmares of inflation and a stagnant economy.

But, since Americans have been conditioned (like Pavlov's dogs) to the idea of a Federal Wizard King since the Spring of 1933 and less than one in five Americans has ever read Article Two of the Constitution which sets forth the job description for the Presidency, millions will be looking for the next President to wave some sort of magic wand and make things nice again so we can slip back into the wonderful world of mall shopping and celebrity worship.

Answer 4

he will do exactly what bush did ! CHUG CHUG CHUG!!!!!!!!

Answer 5

Doesn't matter who is president.  Big problem is that our congress has decided to not drill in the Continental USA, in Alaska, off our shores or anywhere that anyone says there will be an environmental impact.

In addition, our congress has decided that there shouldn't  be any more refineries built.

Our congress has also decided that we shouldn't have nuc power.

The Democratic leader in the House said today that since the USA only has 2% of the known oil reserves in the USA that we shouldn't get them, that we need to get solar power, wind power and geo thermal power.  

Bunch of wishing, instead of a bunch of real efforts to eliminate our dependence on others.

Seems that when President Bush threatened the Saudis the other day, that they laughed, because they know they can sell all the oil they produce to the Chinese.

I think that today, Obama says that what we need to do is get bikes and to cut down on our consumption.   Sounds like pie in the sky to me.  At least McCain has taken the unpopular position that he'd like to build nuc power plants, which would cut down on the amount of oil we need to make electrical power.

Looks to me as if the politicians don't really care, because they get driven around in limos and don't have to pay for gas.

My little car cost $70 for the last fill-up.  I can't afford that kind of money to get to work.  And, our politicians have not been exercised enough to come up with a real fix.  They are hitting around the edges -- I guess because they are afraid of being voted out by the "greens".

Answer 6

Yeah cause presidents sit in their office all day long clicking a button that makes the prices go up.

Maybe you neocons should think a little more before you make these d**n threads.

Answer 7

You know what gets me currency is printed out on a machine and they can make as much or as little as they want but they cant make enough to cover rising gas costs so that it could stay atleast some price us people below the poverty line can afford.  I want a president whom would end this war and make peace. I wish it was possible for none of the candidates to win and for us to nominate someone below poverty levels. someone whom actually knows what its like to be where some of us are.

Answer 8

What a surprise?

Answer 9

Exactly what he can do--nothing.

Answer 10

he cant really reduce the gas prices, its not in the presidents hands.....unless, they find out that someone is manipulating the prices.

Answer 11

Propose a tax increase on it and everything else

Answer 12

He will do absolutely nothing.  There's nothing he can do.  Oil companies are the ones that set the price of gas.  If he was to get elected (and he won't) the oil companies will be raising the price of gas by leaps and bounds.  Obama has said that he's going to take the profits from the oil companies and if that happens, those companies are going to have to get their profits from somewhere and that will be from us.  Expect gas to go up to $10 or more a gallon.

Of course he could do as McCain has suggested and drop the tax on gas at least for the summer, that would help matters.

Answer 13

He COULD -whether he will or not is like predicting the lottery- roll back H.R. 5660, and Senate Bill 3283.

What is this about?

The late, infamous Enron head, Ken Lay, realized in the eighties that he could make more money bidding up energy in the futures market than by actually creating and selling energy. But, under then-current rules, how much you could make swapping paper was limited. Fortuitously, Lay had excellent Texas political connections; and in November of 1992, the head of the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) moved to exempt energy-derivative contracts and related swaps from any government oversight.

A vote was hurriedly put together before the Clinton White House would take over, and so Lay could finally start "dark" – unregulated – futures trading. The head of the CFTC was Wendy Gramm, wife of Texas Senator Phil Gramm; five weeks after she left, she became a board member of Enron in Houston.

Fast-forward to late 2000 and H.R. 5660, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, sponsored by Republican Congressman Thomas Ewing of Illinois. That bill went nowhere, even though Tom Delay’s wife Christine was then working for a Washington lobbying firm, Alexander Strategies – which Enron had paid $200,000 to push through legislation for permanent energy deregulation in these "dark" markets.

Six months later came Senate Bill 3283, also named the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This time around the sponsor was Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, and now Phil Gramm was listed as one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Like it had in the House, this bill was destined to go nowhere until, late one night, it was attached as a rider to an 11,000-page appropriations bill – which was signed into law by President Clinton.

Now traders had an officially deregulated market for energy futures. Worse, that bill also deregulated many financial instruments – including the collateralized debt obligations that are at the center of today’s mortgage crisis, which may well cost us more than $1 trillion before it’s over.

As USA Today wrote of this fiasco in January of 2002, "But, as a power marketer, [Enron] could buy enough energy-futures contracts in a region to create a virtual monopoly." That’s right: As early as the winter of 2002, it was widely known that the 2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act had created a monster, capable of running up energy prices outside of the normal law of supply and demand. Worse, our government had been warned this was going to happen. Representatives of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC had already told Congress not to deregulate energy because "the market was ripe for manipulation." Everybody was warned; that’s why this deregulation bill was stealthily inserted into that appropriations bill without a floor debate.

Phil Gramm’s office denied that he had anything to do with writing the section of that bill that actually deregulated energy. And yet Prof. Michael Greenberger, formerly a CFTC board member himself, said that Gramm’s wife Wendy, along with a few lobbyists and Wall Street attorneys, had rewritten it. When Robert Manor of the Chicago Times wrote about this situation on January 18, 2002, neither Gramm could be reached for comment.

When Enron failed and took its private, unregulated energy exchange to the grave, another rose to take its place. The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) was the brainchild of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, British Petroleum, Deutsche Bank, Dean Witter, Royal Dutch Shell, SG Investment Bank and Totalfina. In 2001 ICE purchased the International Petroleum Exchange in London; renamed ICE Futures, it now operates as an "exempt commercial market" under section 2(H)(3) of the Commodity Exchange Act. As the Senate hearings pointed out in the summer of 2006, "Both markets operate outside of any CFTC oversight."

In other words put the regulation of energy trading back in place and the government(s) are back in control. There is no shortage, there is no lack of production, it's as high as ever, inventories are at a 20 year high. Some s*****k at Morgan Stanley declares that oil will be $150 by July 4th and what happens, oil futures go up.

In other words, stinking rich trading companies and the oil corporations are speculating on the price of oil and food and just about everything else, in fact Exxon/Mobil is slated to dump, yes DUMP well over 2,000 retail gas stations they now own because they lose money on them and they are just a big headache for the company. Meanwhile the gas station lessors and owners can go broke for all the company cares, matter of fact many are running 3rd mortgages just to keep the business running.

Answer 14

The price of gasoline is determined by market forces - not by the President. Duh!

Answer 15

There are more important things to worry about than the price of gas.

However, I respect Obama as he is the only canidate who did not talk about supporting a  repeal the federal gas tax.  Hillary and McCain pandered.

Answer 16

I heard Obama give a speech where he said we'd spend $100 billion in the next 10 years on alternative fuels.  That is only $10 billion a year, but it amounts to 6 cents a gallon in taxes that he doesn't have - so either he'd raise taxes that sum or go further into deficit.  The statement, 'alternative fuels" was not complete or in detail - so no one knows what it means.