When Telling the Truth is Telling a Lie

The Republicans have been harping on gas prices for quite some time. Last May they were talking about gas prices doubling under the Obama administration. Today Romney is quoted suggest that the Obama team “talk to…..the folks who are having a hard time filling up their car because the price of gasoline has doubled under this president?” The GOP has recently put forth a video featuring the graphic below claiming “Skyrocketing Gas Prices Under President Obama.”

The number are correct, but the graphic and the claims do not tell the entire story. On first count the graphic itself is deceptive in that is starts with a base value of $1.50 per gallon for the cost of gas. Thus the increase in price over the past three and a half years look bigger than it is.

I have been tracking what I have paid for gas since March of 2004. The graph is very instructive. First look at the GOP numbers. Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. I filled my gas tank the same day for $1.779 per gallon. Just last week I filled my tank. The price had gone up to $3.589 per gallon. That is a doubling of the price of gas. Below is a graph of the price I have paid for gas at the first fill-up each month since March of 2004.

So what happened? The first tank of has in March 2004 cost me $1.719 per gallon. By the summer of 2008 the price had much more than doubled to a peak of $4.039 per gallon. This all happened under the Republican Bush administration. So much for the evidence that the Republicans can do a better job of controlling the cost of gasoline.

After June of 2008 the price of gas plummeted down to the the levels that the GOP is so keen on citing at the beginning of the Obama administration. The reason for the fall in price, for those who fail to remember their recent history, was the onset of the current recession. So perhaps the republicans would suggest an even deeper recession to return gas prices to the level of $1.70 per gallon.

The truth is that gas prices have been rising for a number of reasons over the last half century. Anyone who understands economics fully expected that gas prices would return to the levels seen in 2008 when the current recession ends. That they have done so should surprise no one.