Hillary Clinton: Oil Prices Will Go Down Just Because I’m President
One of the most absurd campaign promises made to sense.
MANCHESTER, N.H. – Hillary Clinton predicted Saturday that just electing her President will cut the price of oil.
When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign fuel, Clinton says, oil-pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America’s incentive to develop alternative energy.
“I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil,” Clinton said, speaking at the Manchester YWCA. “They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede.”
Clinton argued that former President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s actually started moving in the right direction toward energy independence, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, “dismantled” that work.
“Because costs were low, people didn’t care, didn’t complain,” she said.
Does that make any sense? I have no doubt that OPEC manipulates prices, but Hillary praises the policies of the Carter administration? Weren’t there widespread gas shortages under Carter? Not to mention sky-high gas prices? Mostly because Jimmy and his fellow Democrats pushed through new taxes and regulations on the oil industry that drove production and distribution costs, and thus gas prices, higher?
Gas prices went down under Reagan because he deregulated and cut taxes. What Hillary seems to be promising here is not so much ending dependence on foreign oil but rather taxing-and-regulating America back to the exorbitant price of fuel from the 1970′s (something we haven’t reached yet even at today’s high prices once you adjust for inflation).
