White House Considered Spending Gobs Of Money On Gas Cards, And Other Ideas

As if we needed more convincing of how the Biden administration thinks, a media report from Saturday confirms the White House’s first instinct to sol

As if we needed more convincing of how the Biden administration thinks, a media report from Saturday confirms the White House’s first instinct to solve any problem is to simply throw money at it.

As of Sunday, the per-gallon price of gas on a national average was $4.26. That is up 47.5 percent from a year ago.

President Joe Biden in recent days has blamed skyrocketing gas prices on both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as well as the rapacious greed of Big Oil.

While the trend may have accelerated in the month since Putin launched his assault, the truth is that prices at the pump have climbed steadily almost from Biden’s first day in office.

As gas prices increasingly became a financial hardship and headache for both consumers and a debilitating political problem for the White House, the administration thought they saw a way to provide temporary relief, according to Axios.

No, it was not to relax regulation of oil companies or open up domestic supply lines, or to make nieces with oil producers – such as Saudi Arabia – who feel alienated by President Joe Biden and won’t even take his phone calls.

Rather, Team Biden wanted to provide everyone a gas card.

“Democrats desperately want to offer some kind of policy response,” Axios reported. Thus, “The White House this week considered having the IRS send gas cards to Americans.”

Axios described the plan as “short-lived” after it was “vehemently opposed” by key House Democrats.

Axios noted the key objections to the plan included:

It would be expensive and poorly targeted.
It may make inflation, already galloping along at a clip unseen in 40 years, even worse.
It wouldn’t do much to lower actual gas prices.
And delivering the cards would be a slow process that could bog down IRS staff in the middle of the tax-filing season, possibly delaying the processing of tax returns.

White House spokesperson Vedant Patel told Axios, “There’s a variety of ideas being discussed to ensure that the costs American families are feeling at the pump are as minimal as possible. However, gas cards being sent to the American people is not seriously under consideration. It is not an administratively feasible solution and the Biden Administration is not considering this as a serious option to help American families.”

So what is viewed as a “serious option” for Democrats?

Axios reported a few are making the rounds. They include: