What Michele Bachmann would have to do to deliver on her $2/gallon gasoline pledge

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:43:00 +0000

It has been a week since Congresswoman Michele Bachmann told the country that she would bring gasoline prices down to under $2 per gallon if she were president. The reaction has run from "Wow! Can she really do that?" to "There is no way a president can determine the cost of gasoline." Candidate Bachmann has been pilloried by the left for her hubris, grandiosity, cynical political posturing and failure to grasp the realities of a world petroleum market.

The critics are wrong. A president of the United States can drive gasoline prices down, and the promise to do so is not new. Though Bachmann did not immediately provide a plan on how she would drive prices at the pump lower, there have been many plans promoted to lower the price of gasoline, and she may have drawn from some of them.

She may have been listening to The Donald. In his short-lived run for the White House, Donald Trump said he would bring the price of oil down by seizing the oil fields of Iraq and Libya and putting total production of these two countries in our gasoline stations. Two problems with that scenario: First, the seized oil would have to first pass through the world market where it would be available to the highest bidder. And two, it would be a criminal act of the highest order. Details.

Salon.com > Don Shelby

What Michele Bachmann would have to do to deliver on her $2/gallon gasoline pledge