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Bachmann stands by $2 gasoline pledge
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is doubling down on her vow to drive gasoline prices to less than $2 per gallon if she’s elected president, a pledge that 2012 GOP rival Jon Huntsman said isn’t rooted in the “real world.”
Bachmann drew attention last week when she pledged at a Tuesday campaign stop that “Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 per gallon again.”
“The price of gasoline the day that Barack Obama took office was $1.79 a gallon,” she said in the Times account.“If the price of gasoline was $1.79 a gallon just two and three years ago, certainly we can get it back down to that level again. Why wouldn’t we be able to do that? We’re a ‘can-do’ America.”
U.S. policymakers have few tools to dramatically sway gasoline prices, which track crude oil prices that are set on world markets.
But Bachmann nonetheless laid U.S. gas prices — which reached a nationwide average of roughly $4 per gallon in May before falling back — at the feet of U.S. fiscal and energy policies.
“What Barack Obama has done is lock up America’s energy reserves,” she said.
