The Media's Obama Defense

After last night's debate, the media is out today in full force trying to defend president Obama against some of the more telling points made by Mitt Romney. One such example is a piece on the CNN website discussing whether or not the president can really do anything about rising gasoline prices. Remember that last night Romney pointed out that when Obama took office, the average price of gasoline was $1.84 per gallon and now it is more than double that amount. Romney blamed the rise in part on Obama failed energy policies. Obama pointed to increased domestic energy production and claimed that his administration was promoting the production of natural gas and oil. Romney then pointed out that the increase in production was on land where the president could not affect drilling while on federal land where Obama had control, the production levels were down. Obama responded by calling Romney a liar. He also said that prices were low when he took office because the economy was in recession. That is a very short summary of what was said.

The point here is that gasoline prices have soared on Obama's watch; that is something which cannot be disputed. No one could validly blame that price increase on the change in the direction of the economy from 2009 to 2012. Americans are actually using less gasoline now than they did in 2009 despite the improvement of the economy from recession to just stagnation. Obama's point that lack of demand caused the price drop in 2009 was just plain wrong.

Further, it is also beyond dispute that production of oil on land where Obama has some control over production has declined during Obama's time in office. Obama first put on a major moratorium for off shore drilling of all sorts at the time of the BP spill; that cut production by a lot. Then, Obama raised the requirements for drill permits and slowed down the approvals of such permits from an average of six days during the Bush and Clinton administrations to a new average of about 9 months from submission to approval. The result has been a big drop in production on federal and off shore land.

Clearly, the president does not have control of the world oil market; he cannot decree that prices stop going up. But that is not the real question. Obama could have promoted domestic oil production (like he falsely claimed at the debate.) That would have led to American oil production being about half a million barrels per day higher today. That additional production ought to have caused lower prices at the pump across the country. But that is not the only result of such conduct. Half a million barrels of oil per day would no longer have to be imported from abroad. That means that each week about $350 million would have flowed into the US economy rather than being sent to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or the like. That is something like $20 billion dollars per year injected directly into the American economy with the result that tens of thousands of new jobs would have been created, all as a result of promoting rather than opposing private development of oil resources. Were the Romney plan for promoting energy production to be followed, the impact would be a great many times larger. That means hundreds of thousands of new jobs with all the benefits that flow from those jobs and billions of additional revenue for the government with a resulting reduction in the deficit. In short, promoting oil production ought to be a no brainer. I guess that means that Obama has no brain.