Townhall
Finance...
Chu Pimps Your Budget
at the Pump
By Bob Beauprez
Memorial Day normally kicks off the summer vacation and heavy driving
season, but with gas prices at the pump more than twice as expensive as
they were two years ago, American families are being forced to stay
close to home and pull back on normal family expenses.
The cost to fill up the tank is consuming 40% more of the family budget
than it did last summer.
According to AAA, 17 cents of every consumer dollar is spent at the
pump, up from 12 cents one year ago. That has consequences, of
course. “Dining, shopping, museums, and gambling are taking a
hit, while less costly activities like going to the beach, sightseeing,
hiking, or visiting state or national parks are on the rise,”
says Jim Lardear, spokesman for AAA-Atlantic.
Families will spend 14% less on vacations this year than in 2010
according to AAA, which will hit the tourism industry right in the cash
register.
According to an AP report, American households spent an average of $369
on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201; an increase of
83% in just two years.
The average American family now spends more filling up than they spend
on cars, clothes, or recreation. Last year, they spent less on gasoline
than each of those things.
High gas prices are stifling any real economic recovery, too.
Last Friday, the Commerce Department reported that consumer spending on
everything but fuel and food was essentially flat, rising just 0.1% in
April.
With family budgets hammered and wages flat, the housing market
continues to free fall with declining values and predictions that the
percentage of Americans owning homes will tumble to thirty year
lows.
Economists have slashed their once semi-optimistic economic forecasts
for the second quarter of 2011, now “predicting” weak growth of just 2
or 3 percent.
Some of the spike in gas prices is no doubt due to the unrest in the
oil producing nations of the Arab World, but a great deal of it is due
to the agenda of the Obama Administration’s Central Planners to drive
up gas prices.
The stated objective of the Administration according to Energy
Secretary, Stephen Chu, has been “to figure out how to boost the price
of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Unfortunately for American families, they are well on the way.
Interior Secretary Salazar’s permitting moratorium in the gulf, where
nearly a third of our domestic oil and gas is produced, will reduce
production in the region by 35% over two years according to the
government’s own EIA.
Salazar compounded the problem by cancelling vast numbers of existing
energy leases and banning production in 97% of our energy rich
off-shore waters . Business in general and the energy industry in
particular has been hammered with 29 major regulations and 172 major
policy rules proposed or implemented in just two years by Obama’s EPA.
Spending more to get less seems to be Obama’s objective. Less
driving, less vacations, less money left for other things all add up to
less economic activity and less jobs. So, are the actions
of this Administration just a mistake, or was all the talk about saving
and creating jobs just a smoke-screen for their real agenda?
Read it with links at Townhall Finance
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