RUSH: “Average US Gasoline Price Drops Below $2 a Gallon.” Can anybody tell me what government power has resulted in this? Can any of you name for me the aggressive action taken by, say, the Regime or, say, Congress or anybody in government? Give me any office that has resulted in the price of gasoline lowering, because I ask for this reason. When the gasoline price goes up, there are people out there who think that there’s a single person in charge of it, or a single oil company — or, in some cases, the entire oil industry.
But the point is, somebody’s out there manipulating the price and screwing The Little Guy. Every time gas prices skyrocket, there’s somebody responsible for it. And when gas prices skyrocket, members of Congress — politicians left and right — stand up in righteous indignation and say they’re gonna introduce legislation that will lower the price of gasoline. “We’re gonna work on this! We’re gonna expand the reserves. We’re gonna tap the reserves!” They’re gonna do whatever they come up with, whatever they’re gonna do.
They’re gonna lower the price of gasoline just like they’re gonna lower your cable bill, right? Okay. So in recent months, the price of gasoline at the pump has been plummeting. And now the average US gasoline price has dropped below $2 a gallon. Can somebody tell me who did it? I know a lot of liberal Democrats instinctively are going to think Obama did it because he cares about The Little Guy, and Democrats did it because they care about The Little Guy and that the Democrats did it because they hate Big Business and they hate Big Oil, and Big Oil deserves this. And so the Democrats have to be the ones that did it.
But the fact of the matter is there isn’t anybody who did it, and there isn’t a policy that did it, there isn’t any legislation, there is no activism, there hasn’t been any protest march, hasn’t been any riots. There is nothing that has taken place that you would consider to be artificial that has resulted in this dramatic drop in price of gasoline at the pump. Do you know what the reason really is? (interruption) What was that? No, it’s not. No, it’s not that it’s an election year. But, see, the cynical. If it’s an election year that results in the price of gasoline plummeting, who benefits?
People in power. Would that be the Democrats or would it be the Republicans? The Republicans run the House and the Senate. Obama’s over there in the White House. Who gets credit for it? If you say an election year is the explanation, then that has to mean government did it, which means government can on a whim just grab a lever and lower the price of gas or, alternatively, grab a lever and raise the price. Except none of that’s the reason. The giant umbrella answer to this is the market did it. Gasoline prices are plummeting because of the market. Meaning, free market economics.
The price of gasoline is now cheaper — this amazes me — than bottled water. Can you imagine these oil industry guys? Look at what they have to do to put together a gallon of gasoline. They’ve gotta go to the absolute worst parts of the world. They’ve gotta fight pestilence and hunger and poverty and insects and mud and the elements to find oil, and then they get all greasy and stuff getting the oil up, and then they get the oil up and they gotta move it all over the world, ship it, they’ve gotta pipe it, they’ve gotta pipeline it, whatever they gotta do. And then they’ve gotta refine it, and after they refine it, then they’ve gotta distribute it to these gas stations.
Can you believe all of that, and they’re getting less for it than guys who stick a jug under the faucet in the bathroom and fill it up and go to the grocery store and sell that? And don’t make the mistake of thinking that every bottle of water you buy comes from some imaginary fresh artesian spring somewhere. A lot of these companies are just turning on the tap.
No, it’s fracking. I mean, the actual answer is fracking. The average US gasoline price drop below two dollars a gallon is due to fracking, which the Democrat Party hates, which Barack Obama hates. They despise it. The environmentalist wackos hate it. Solar panels had nothing to do with it. Neither did wind turbines or windmill farms. There’s no alternative energy explosion that has anything to do with the drop in price of gasoline at the pump. It’s fracking, a way of getting oil that’s relatively new. It’s called horizontal drilling. I mean, if that’s what you want to picture to understand what fracking is, it’s horizontal drilling. And they’ve simply added to the supply.
There are some who say that because of fracking we have greater oil reserves in the United States and North America than they do in Saudi Arabia. As the price of gasoline plummets, so of course first does the price of oil, the barrel price of oil. While this is greatly for consumers, it’s not good for some in the oil business. Some of them can’t stay in business at these prices. It costs more to bring it up than they can sell it for. So it means leave it in the ground.