Boehner: Obama causing energy costs to rise
March 10th, 2011
08:35 PM ET
4 years ago

Boehner: Obama causing energy costs to rise

Washington (CNN) - House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that the Obama administration is exacerbating rising energy costs and adding an extra financial burden to struggling American families and small businesses.

"The Obama administration has consistently blocked American energy production that would lower costs and create jobs in our country," Boehner said at a press conference announcing a House GOP initiative to push for more domestic energy production.


Republicans have repeatedly criticized the administration and congressional Democrats for what they perceive to be a lackluster response to the rapidly rising cost of oil.

But White House Chief of Staff William Daley defended the administration's efforts, telling NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that President Barack Obama is "extremely concerned" about the price hikes, and that all options - including tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - are being discussed.

A White House official told CNN late Thursday that Obama will hold a news conference at 11:15 am on Friday to discuss rising gas prices and other issues.

Filed under: John Boehner • Obama administration
soundoff (109 Responses)
  1. jt35

    Where are the jobs Boehner? Where are the jobs? You are failing to deliver on the jobs you promised.

    March 11, 2011 01:06 am at 1:06 am |
  2. Darth Vadik, CA

    Yeah Bohener, Obama is, this coming from the party of "We're sorry BP, we're sorry for the way we treated you when you messed up our gulf with your carelessness..."

    Go cry to someone else Boehner, people ain't buying what you're selling.....

    March 11, 2011 01:14 am at 1:14 am |
  3. ThinkAgain

    Rising gas prices are because of the turmoil in the Middle East – and has NOTHING to do with President Obama! This is just another example of the Republicans trying to blame the President for anything and everything.

    And you know what? If Americans are stupid enough to believe all the nonsense that the GOP flings at us, then we get what we deserve. We're just becoming so intellectually lazy and willing to go along with whatever knee-jerk emotional button the GOP tries to push.

    We're becoming pretty pathetic, folks.

    March 11, 2011 01:18 am at 1:18 am |
  4. Lee, Mays Landing New Jersey

    Of course when gas prices were even HIGHER during Dubya Bush's final year it was not Bush's and the Republicans fault.... No!!! And Bush and Cheney were oil "experts" that "fixed" our energy policy by setting it back

    March 11, 2011 01:22 am at 1:22 am |
  5. jim

    actually, obama is helping to keep the consumer costs of gas lower, by conserving our resources. while other countries use their oil up, we don't. eventually, WE'LL be the country with a supply..

    regardless ... eventually we will be required to move to a renewable fuel. we can not ... CAN NOT ... use oil forever.

  6. CaliforniaBC

    Oh my god...this guy will say anything. Even if we drill here in the US it doesn't mean that prices will fall because many of those new areas are very difficult and costly to extract the oil, prices are set globally and if we would just develop alternatives we can get the process underway to get us off oil and we won't have to worry about the next fart in the Middle East that causes oil to rise. ANd please people don't tout Alaska. The oil from there doesn't even go towards making gasoline nor does the bulk of it stay in the US.

    Why is this so hard for these Republicans to understand.

    March 11, 2011 01:38 am at 1:38 am |
  7. robertj

    Lets see this is coming from the same party that said there was nothing wrong when gas hit $4 a gallon when our last president was in office. They said it was just the the free enterprise system at work

    March 11, 2011 01:46 am at 1:46 am |
  8. Marry

    …ah, yes, always the same old story with the GOP trying to work on symptoms not on causes and to protect their “Buddies”. So very yesterday!! The US being the HIGHES ENERGY COMSUMING Nation per capita in the world, it is high time and lots of room to modernize and to work against more and wasteful consumption. Perhaps the prices have to rise still a lot more to convince the people and the industries that something drastic has to be done to become competitive again and at the same time to do something positive that will protect the climate and the environment (where our kids would like to live too…). If at the same time there would then be an effort to put a rain on the big corporations (of cause not with the GOP), things would improve a lot.

    March 11, 2011 02:02 am at 2:02 am |
  9. thomas

    This guy is a Bum who has no right to be in politics. How much was the war Mr Bummer ?

    March 11, 2011 02:07 am at 2:07 am |
  10. shadysider

    If gas companies have made record profits, doesn't the Republican 'trickle-down' economic theory state that there would be a corresponding record growth in jobs within the industry? If this hasn't been debunked and accepted as false by now, I don't know what to say. That being said, maybe Obama should release reserves in order to possibly drop supply and therefore prices, but I tend to think that the majority of the rise is due to the buying of oil futures, a practice which should end, in my opinion. It's the same thing that has happened with gold.

    March 11, 2011 02:32 am at 2:32 am |
  11. BeverlyNC

    No Boehner is intentionally lying. These prices are controlled by Wall St and ther Futures Council. It is SPECULATION that drives prices. It is Wall St once again destroying America while making huge profits. In Boehner's budget, Wall St and the bank regulations we reinstated to protect America are weakened by defunding the regulatory agency. Boehner is a hypocrite and everything out of his mouth is a LIE. Republicans cannot be trusted. They are the ones destroying America and the middle class.

    March 11, 2011 02:34 am at 2:34 am |
  12. Are you kidding me ?

    Okay Boehner ! I guess this is one more thing you can try to blame on the president ! You and the GOP have blamed everything you can think of on the president ! Even things that you did ! The GOP is becoming laughable now ! Boehner instead of pointing your finger on gas prices , you need to be focused on job creation ! Remember , you and the GOP said that you would do but haven't done anything like that so far this year ! Just another Republican lie !

    March 11, 2011 02:45 am at 2:45 am |
  13. Aaron

    Oh, please. Boehner's oil company benefactors jacking oil and gas prices up artifically and without justification is causing energy prices to rise. Who does Bonehead think is gullible to believe his bs?

    March 11, 2011 02:50 am at 2:50 am |
  14. stevetall

    More stupid comments coming from John Boehner's mouth isn't news. The oil companies are raising prices, brainiac, and always disproportionate to the actual cost of a barrel of oil. TAX THE RICH, END OIL AND FARM SUBSIDIES, SAVE AMERICA!

    March 11, 2011 02:56 am at 2:56 am |
  15. ahetch

    Boehner, you are a liar on so many levels..

    March 11, 2011 03:34 am at 3:34 am |
  16. Keesa

    im so tired of the gop think the american people or mentelly retards,there or afew out ther that or mentally insane,crazy and plain old stupid anytime they gonna vote back in a party that crash the econamy not once,not twice but three times i'll thank their stupid to.

    March 11, 2011 04:34 am at 4:34 am |
  17. mike

    hey cray baby get a life drill baby drill means one thing more profits for the oil companies lets get real we won't see one drop of the oil that is products in this country because it will go in to the global market and the oil contracts that the speculators buy go to the highs bidder so drill on this baby

    March 11, 2011 05:18 am at 5:18 am |
  18. Thatguy371

    Yeah right Waterworks Boehner, like your buddy Dubya did such a great job with the energy costs problem. Always shifting the blame around instead of working on a viable energy wise solution.

    March 11, 2011 05:44 am at 5:44 am |
  19. Chris

    "Drill, Baby, Drill!" – How did that all work out? Unrestrained drilling just led to the biggest ecological disaster in history and billions in dollars of damage.

    Study after study shows that allowing more drilling only brings fuel costs down by pennies while giving oil companies millions.

    March 11, 2011 06:03 am at 6:03 am |
  20. Marie MD

    Before going into this story I would like to know . . . . WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR TAN, ORANGE MAN? Just saw you on TV and it can't be in this area where we have had numerous cloudy days and flooding just yesterday.
    That being said . . . . It is NOT the democrats who are hiking the oil prices. Do you ever listen to the news or do you keep abreast of what is happening in Lybia where we get a LARGE portiong of our oil? You are pathetic!!!
    Your party of only the rich count extended the shrub's tax cuts further hurting our economic recoveory. What do you have to say about that? What about all those jobs you republikans said they were going to add. Where are the jobs? Oh yeah, right, you want to cut employment NOT create more jobs.

    March 11, 2011 06:20 am at 6:20 am |
  21. jules sand-perkins

    Did Boehner cry when he made this statement about the President?
    It's hard ti take Boehner seriously.
    As for energy prices and American gas consumption, some of the most enjoyable experiences of my life occured when I was driving around Italy in a little Fiat that most Americans would not want their neighbors to see in their driveways. Americans like to imagine they're easing on down the road in sixty-foot Chris-Craft yachts.

    March 11, 2011 06:47 am at 6:47 am |
  22. Name king

    These corporations cannot do no wrong in the eyes of the repugs, any thing they do to hurt the American people is somehow a fault of the dems, the use the future of the the American people to slam dems for the so call out of control spending. Yet they want big oil to ruin our future generations with pollution, it's time our dependency on oil is minimized, I know the repugs tries to trick the ignorant American society that their is not a climate change taking place, as they are coerced by big oil companies to fool the people. If we start drilling for oil, as they are forcing Obama to do, any spill or disaster, they will blame on Obama, just like they did in the gulf spill. Now when will the repugs ever put a check on big corporations to stop their, reckless ways of operating and hurting the American consumers. yet all they bitch about is more deregulations for them to do as they please with us, just like what they are trying to do with the Heath insurance companies, to do as they please again, sending the American consumers into debt crisis with higher premiums.

    March 11, 2011 07:05 am at 7:05 am |
  23. Anonymous

    The weepy Orange Man is out to lunch. The US has virtually NO control over gas prices. Yet again, another Greedy Old Pig is lying to the public and trying to stir up more fear, ignorance and hate. The Greedy Old Pig war against the poor and middle class continues in full force.

    March 11, 2011 07:15 am at 7:15 am |
  24. Dave

    Boehner is a typical Republican – all mouth and no brains. All they do is complain and offer no ideas of substance. Even when they are in the leadership, it's always someone else's fault. Then when they lose their majority, the Democrats will have to clean up after their messes. Once again...

    March 11, 2011 07:27 am at 7:27 am |
  25. Rdepontb

    General Shinseki of the VA, then Army Chief of Staff, famously said upon his taking command and needing to cut the strings to "the old-and over-costly-way of doing things must end." His term for that was "irreversible momentum:" Strategically cutting programs that had too long a history, and hence a self-perpetuating constituency

    What we have needed in the US of A is such an irreversible momentum action to move us off of fossil fuels in the long run. Aside from some partisan-pushed move toward clean and/or renewable energy, the major push seems to be coming from the T. Boone Pickens camp. He would be happy to mandate converting trailer trucks and other work trucks to natural gas, and away from gasoline and diesel. It would upset the trucking industry to institute such a dramatic shift in their business plans, but the savings would be extraordinary. So extraordinarily positive, in fact, that those savings would be shared by the entire nation. For that reason, the entire nation could and should help in the transition phase.

    Help could come in accepting slower deliveries for a period of time (or a little pre-planning), shifting to rail traffic, and supporting local and regional natural gas pipelines, storage, and distribution systems.

    Irreversible momentum-there is no reason this shouldn't be a bipartisan effort, to help put our country back in charge of its own destiny.

    March 11, 2011 07:38 am at 7:38 am |
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