President Obama on High Gas Prices

Claim:   President Obama told U.S. consumers that they should "get used to" higher gas prices and "trade your car in for an energy efficient car."

MIXTURE

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, April 2011]

Origins:   Whether rising gas prices will hit $5 per gallon in the U.S. by Memorial Day 2011 is a matter of speculation, but the notion that President Barack Obama's response to the issue of high gas prices was to simply shrug and suggest that people "get used to it" and "trade your car in for an energy efficient car" appears to be a very poor paraphrase of something the president said.

As seen in the clip below, during a talk with workers at Gamesa, a wind turbine manufacturer, on 6 April 2011, President Obama fielded a question about rising gas prices. Obama's response was to explain why the cost of gasoline periodically spikes, and then to outline possible solutions to the issue of high gas prices, emphasizing that none of them was a short-term answer: increase oil production; shift to more efficient, higher-mileage automobiles; and encourage the development of alternative fuel (e.g., electricity, natural gas) vehicles. The president did take a good-natured jab at an SUV driver in the audience ("If you're complaining about the price of gas, and you're only getting eight miles a gallon ...") while emphasizing that "None of [what I've outlined] is going to help you this week, though":

Last updated:   28 April 2011