Labor Sec. Walsh: High Gas Prices Are Not Biden’s Fault

WALSH: “Well, certainly I think that, you know, the plans that the President put out there to tackle inflation in a lot of cases are working. We’re seeing it come down incrementally. We’d like to see it come down more than that. Certainly the supply chain issue added a bit concern to the inflation numbers. Obviously gas, what OPEC has done now, is disappointing, certainly to the President and to us, but it also just points out that we need to be less reliant on foreign energy, we need to continue to move forward. You know, some of the things that the Fed have done, certainly you add what the Fed is doing and what Treasury is doing, what we’re doing as an administration collectively together, we’ll hopefully continue to see these inflationary pressures come down where we don’t go into recession. I mean, I personally, you know, when you say recession, you can’t compare this moment in time to any other period in the past when we talk about recessions because we’re coming off a worldwide catastrophe and a global pandemic. So, the pressures are different. You know, we’re not the only country in the world, obviously, dealing with this. European countries are dealing with this as well.”

“Well certainly when it comes to energy and what we’re dealing with gas, I mean, that certainly was not created by this administration. We’re dealing with a war in Ukraine that you guys report upon every day, which is very sad, unfortunate. We’re talking about decisions OPEC has made, which is very disappointing as well. And I think what it does is for too long America has been too dependent on foreign energy and I think that the President has made it very clear in the Inflation Reduction Act to be less dependent on foreign energy supplies, whether it is oil or gas, as we move forward here. We need to continue to do that. We’re seeing more production to deal with the issue immediately. We’re seeing our refineries ramping up more production here in the United States of America to bring the cost down for American people at the gas pump. For 13 straight weeks we saw a reduction because of President Biden’s policies and decisions, we saw gas prices coming down. You clearly — OPEC caught the administration by surprise in the decision they made yesterday so we’re readjusting now to deal with the decisions they’ve made.”