GOP Blames Biden On Gas Prices, But Fact Checkers Debunk The Slur

As gas prices across the United States continue to soar, Republican lawmakers are using the moment as an opportunity to blame President Joe Biden; not Russian President Vladamir Putin, the dictator who started the war that led to this economic domino effect.

Now, fact-checkers are weighing in to refute the lawmakers' claims. According to Yahoo! News, multiple Republicans have attempted to spin the truth about gas prices this week.During a press conference this week, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) claimed, "These aren’t Putin prices. They’re President Biden’s prices.”

While speaking to Fox Business this week, former Vice President Mike Pence said, "In the four years of the Trump-Pence administration, we achieved energy independence for the first time in 70 years.”

He added, "We were a net exporter of energy. But from very early on, with killing the Keystone pipeline, taking federal lands off the list for exploration, sidelining leases for oil and natural gas – once again, before Ukraine ever happened, we saw rising gasoline prices.”Despite Republicans' bogus claims, Yahoo News explains:

"Fact-checkers have pointed out that the main cause of increasing gas prices over the past year is disruptions to global supply and demand following the coronavirus pandemic. Only a 10th of the Keystone XL pipeline was complete when Biden cancelled it and it was not likely to become operational until 2023 at the earliest."

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) advisor, has also pushed back against Republicans' flawed claims criticizing their attempts to score "political points.""It just goes to show that there are no lengths to which Republicans won’t stoop to try to score political points, in this case using the unthinkable and tragic situation that the Ukrainian people find themselves in.

“To try to exploit that and use it to effectively lie and mislead the American people about conditions here at home is an unconscionable act of political cowardice.”

Bardella also pointed out that Republicans were in favor of Biden imposing sanctions on Russia prior to the surge in gas prices.“Republicans were so vocal about how the Biden administration needed to do sanctions on Russian oil and then they start attacking him. You can’t win because everything that they do is basically an illustration of how they operate in bad faith."

He added, "Joe Biden could do every single thing that the Republican party wants and they would still attack him at the end of the day. Republicans just seem to operate in a purely craven political dynamic. It’s irresponsible and downright un-American, and it’s exactly what they would have said if Democrats had done this in the wake of 9/11 or in the run up to the war on terror.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet