The Biden administration has received another round of backlash for making what many view as a silly and insignificant claim as an “accomplishment” over the Independence Day holiday. The White House boasted a one-cent decrease in the nation’s year-over-year gas prices on Thursday, the “lowest holiday price” since the previous Fourth of July, Fox News noted.
“‘July 4th gas prices expected to hit lowest level in 3 years,'” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The projection is from a GasBuddy estimate this week, indicating that the $3.49 average cost for gas this Independence Day represents a decline of over $1.30 compared to 2022.
“For those hitting the road to celebrate Independence Day, gas prices have seen modest recent fluctuations, but most states are seeing prices near or even well below where they were a year ago,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy said in a news release. “While the first half of the summer has been relatively smooth sailing, the road ahead may be bumpy. Activity in the tropics has increased, and projections remain for a very busy hurricane season. Even after the holiday fireworks are over, we’ll be watching for any potential fireworks at the pump that could be brought on by hurricanes disrupting refineries.”
According to a recent projection by GasBuddy, the average cost for a 10-person Independence Day cookout is now estimated at $71.22, marking a 5% increase from last year and nearly a 30% rise compared to five years ago. This update follows a report from the American Farm Bureau (AFB) detailing the rising expenses associated with holiday celebrations.
“Higher prices at the grocery store reflect a number of challenges facing America’s families. Lower availability of some cookout staples and inflation are hitting people in their wallets,” AFB chief economist Roger Cryan noted, according to Fox. “Farmers are also feeling the effects of high prices. They’re price takers, not price makers. Their share of the retail food dollar is just 15%, but they still pay elevated fuel, fertilizer and other supply prices.”
Fox News host Harris Faulkner corrected former Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy during an interview late last month after he claimed the COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for inflation during President Joe Biden’s term in office.
Murphy made this assertion during a Monday appearance on “The Faulkner Focus,” where the discussion focused on Biden’s challenges with Black and Hispanic voters. Murphy defended Biden’s handling of the economy after Faulkner questioned whether “disenchanted” Black and Hispanic voters might abstain from voting in the upcoming election.
“It doesn’t automatically mean that black and Latino voters are… just completely disenchanted by Biden are gonna vote for Donald Trump,” Faulkner said. “But what it could potentially mean is, they’ll think about it. Some of them will do the one thing that we never want to see happen in America: They’ll just sit. They won’t even exercise their right to vote and that means Biden broke something in this country, and if he doesn’t just fix it for himself, Patrick, he has got to fix it for everybody else. You can’t leave it such that young people are outside the process because of your bad policies.”
“Harris, I absolutely agree with you and I agree with Doug [Collins],” Murphy responded. “The reality of it is, though, the American people have been put through the wringer. It was the worst global pandemic… let’s move on.” But the host interjected immediately by reminding the former Dem lawmaker about the timeline for the worst inflation.
“But the high inflation has been more recent than the pandemic,” Faulkner responded. “Give people some credit… particularly those people who got very ill and struggled and survived, God bless them, all right, and now they’re going to vote based on how they’re experiencing a current presidency. Give them some credit.” Murphy responded, which led Collins to scoff: “I am giving them credit and they also give President Biden credit because inflation was 9%, it’s down to 3% and we have a lot of work to do.”
Inflation peaked at 9% in June 2022, nearly a year and a half after Biden took office in January 2021, when the inflation rate was 1.4%. While the Consumer Price Index decreased to 3.3% year-over-year in May, overall prices have increased by 20.1% since Biden assumed office. Regarding the economy, Biden’s average approval rating stands at 40.8% according to the RealClearPolling average, with only 36.8% rating his handling of inflation positively.
Faulkner wasted no time in responding to Murphy about his claims regarding Biden’s economic policies. “You realize he inherited 1.4 and didn’t have a pandemic in the middle of that, because by May 11th that first year, the president had told us the pandemic was over,” Faulkner responded.
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