Barack Obama Doesn't Want to be Blamed for the Higher Gas Prices

Once of the first things Obama and his Interior Department Secretary did upon taking office is make American oil harder to get. They placed more restrictions on where Americans could drill for oil, and now we may be paying the price less than two and a half years after that decision. Of course, Barack Obama doesn't want to be blamed.

Obama tells the American people that we must get used to paying higher gas prices and if we don't like it, well, he tells us to go buy a new car. He must forget that unemployment has also risen under his watch as well.

The Business and Media Institute tells the story about how Obama isn't taking any blame and the mainstream media is playing right along, not telling the American people about how Obama fought big oil and prevented drilling that could have helped offset the higher prices. Of course those who understand Obama, know this is exactly the change he promised. Remember, he promised to bankrupt coal companies while he was in San Francisco.


Instead of asking whether Obama's anti-oil policies could be increasing the cost of gas, the networks blamed other factors such as Mideast turmoil or the "money game" played by speculators. Certainly, the turmoil in Libya, Egypt and surrounding nations has increased worries about oil production and can influence the price. But the networks also should have looked for explanations much closer to home, like Obama's many regulatory actions taken against the oil industry.

First there was the drilling ban, which was later overturned by federal courts as illegal. Seahawk Drilling, a Texas-based shallow-water drilling company cited that moratorium as the cause of its bankruptcy filing saying, they "have been adversely affected by the dramatic slowdown in the issuing of shallow-water permits in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following the Macondo well blowout."

According to The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration moved on to a de facto moratorium after the ban was overturned. Add to that the EPA's desire to regulate the industry's greenhouse gas emissions and new environmental regulatory hurdles for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude from Canada to the U.S. and create many American jobs.

Despite all of these actions on the part of the Obama administration, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows have barely mentioned them in stories about rising gas prices.