Bachmann's Post-Debate Reaction: Pawlenty Attacks Needed to Be Addressed

One of Tim Pawlenty’s laugh lines last night was a jibe at Mitt Romney’s personal wealth; after declaring that he’d mow the lawn of any American who could identify President Obama’s plan for entitlements reform, Pawlenty said that offer was limited to one acre of lawn for Romney.

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Pawlenty, who talks frequently about his blue-collar upbringing, said at POLITICO’s Playbook Breakfast Friday that he was “just having some fun” with the comment, and didn’t mean it as an attack on Romney.

“I was just having some fun with that, pulling Mitt’s chain a little bit,” Pawlenty said.

But a more serious underlying point, Pawlenty said, is that voters want to know about the backgrounds of the presidential candidates and who they can relate to.

“I think if people are running for president, want to be president, the electorate wants to know who are you, where do you come from,” Pawlenty said. “I don’t suggest that my life story is better or worse than anybody else’s. It’s just different.”

Pawlenty mentioned that his father was a truck driver and his mother died when he was young, and mentioned that he “got lucky, got a job at a grocery store, worked in a union position” and worked his way through college.

“Those are the kinds of things people want to know, because if you’re president, they’re gonna want to know, who is this person and does your life story kind of line up with theirs?” Pawlenty said.

Circling back to Romney, Pawlenty continued: “In Mitt’s case, he’s got an incredibly successful background and I think we should applaud it and celebrate it”

my standard for raising the debt ceiling was yes, "Cut, Cap and Balance," but also we had to have a full repeal of Obamacare. My opinion has been, I would not raise the debt ceiling right now because we're almost up to $17 trillion.

When I came into office, Sean, we were at $8.67 trillion. In a little over four years, we've almost doubled the debt. Standard and Poor's essentially proved me right what I was saying. We are not in a position to be able to repay our debt when we continue to spend this money.

We didn't have to default. We what we had to do is let markets know we won't default. We will get our AAA credit rating back. We're going to pay the military. We're going to pay our senior citizens.

But then, we're not going to kick the can down the road either. We're going to cut spending now and prioritize. That is not an extremist view. That's the reality view that we have to take because right now piper is asking to be paid. It's hit the fan. We've got to deal with the spending now.

It is. Yes, it goes with the territory. I mean, honestly, America had a punch in the gut this week. Let's face it. The president got a $2.4 trillion blank check. We got $21 billion in cuts, not much of a deal.

Two days later the stock market dropped over 500 points, then we lost for the first time in the history of the country the AAA credit rating then we saw a terrible tragedy over the weekend and all told we've lost 1,500 points in the stock market. All the president could do was blame earthquakes and the Tea Party? We've got a problem so who cares about a magazine cover.

but I introduced that because I mean, quite seriously that is symbolic of what is wrong with Washington, isn't it? Because when you're the federal government telling you what light bulb you can use and you can't use? That is why I introduced that bill because when I'm in the White House as president, Sean, you can buy any light bulb you want to buy.

Don't expect gas prices to drop with crude

Energy experts say as world economies slow and the price per barrel of oil drops, the price at the gas pump could also quickly drop in the coming weeks.

Experts said gas prices could drop as much as $.50 over the next several weeks.

Gas prices have already dropped $.13 a gallon in the past week.

The current average price for a gallon of gas nationwide was $3.62.

The current average price for a gallon of gas in Kansas City was $3.42 according to KansasCityGasPrices.com.

The price of crude oil constitutes about 50 per cent of the price at the pump and there are many other factors," said Jason Parent, a senior associate with The Kent Group, an Ontario-based organization that provides data, research, analysis and consulting to the downstream petroleum industry.

While crude oil is the base product, crude prices are quoted as futures and they don't really represent what the refineries pay. One of the other big factors is the wholesale price, which represents many variables.

"If you see the price of crude dropping but don't see retail prices dropping accordingly, that is the reason," Price said.

According to the Aug. 9 Pump Price Survey from MJ Ervin & Associates/Kent Marketing, the price for regular self-serve in Moncton was 127.6 cents per litre, or 89.3 cents per litre when taxes are removed.

The highest price for gas in mainland Canada was 137.4 cents per litre in Timmins, Ont., followed by 135.3 cents per litre in Montreal and 130.5 cents per litre in Vancouver.

Driving is expensive in Newfoundland where gas is 133.5 cents per litre in St. John's and 135.9 cents per litre in Gander, but Labrador City is the most expensive at 141.8 cents per litre.

The lowest gas prices were found in Lloydminster, Alberta at 108.7 cents per litre. Drivers in the oil-rich city of Edmonton pay 110.1 cents for a litre of regular self-serve.

The highs and lows work out to a Canadian average price on Aug. 9 of 125.5 (87.2 cents when taxes are removed), which was still two cents cheaper than the New Brunswick regulated price of 127.6. Drivers in Charlottetown were paying 123.9 cents per litre on Aug. 9, while those in Halifax were paying 128.7 cents per litre.

While there is a long-term correlation between crude oil, the wholesale price and the retail price, Parent said the pricing formulas are so complex that consumers would not see a day-to-day correlation.

New Brunswick's gas prices fell yesterday to the maximum retail price of 121.9 cents per litre for regular self-serve unleaded. On Aug. 5, the New York price of crude was $86.88 per barrel.

Looking back over the last month, prices at the pump in New Brunswick have seen a slight rise and then bit of a decline. On July 14 the price was 126.9 cents per litre, and rose to 127.8 cents per litre on July 21. It was at 127.1 cents per litre on July 28 and 126.9 cents per litre on Aug. 4.

The price of crude, meanwhile, was $97.24 a barrel on July 15, rose to $99.87 on July 22 and then to $95.70 on July 29.

That's a long way from $61.04 per barrel on Dec. 30, 2005, or $58.59 in July of 2009. Last July, prices of crude were in the high 70s, and rose to $80 on Aug. 6, 2010.

The last time gas prices in New Brunswick were lower than 100 cents per litre was in September 2010.

At that point, a barrel of oil was trading for around US$78 a barrel.

In 2008, gas prices peaked at a high of 139.3 cents per litre in mid-September, while quickly bottoming out to a yearly-low of 70.1 cents per litre on the last adjustment of the year in December.

That same general pattern also held true in 2009, as gas prices reached their peak (103.7 cents per litre) in the warm June months, while being significantly lower at the start of the year, and slightly lower by the end of 2009.

In 2010, however, prices were at their lowest (96.5 cents per litre) in mid-June and then hit a yearly high of 110.3 cents per litre on the last adjustment in December.

Gas prices expected to fall

After a year of bad luck with gas prices, consumers will see prices come down at the pump pretty dramatically in the coming weeks,” said Phil Flynn, energy analyst at PFGBest Research.

As we approach the end-of-summer driving season, when we flip back to cheaper blends of oil and we’re seeing that the global demand for oil was not as strong as we thought it would be, we could see prices fall as much as 25 cents to 50 cents at the pump,” he added.

In the past week alone, the price per gallon of gasoline has tumbled 7 cents to a U.S. average of $3.63 on Aug. 10, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. That’s on par with month-ago averages, yet still painfully higher than the year-ago average of $2.78 a gallon.

And though gasoline demand is down roughly 2% compared to a year ago, the prices are at the second-highest level ever, AAA said. The record was set July 17, 2008, at $4.11 a gallon average throughout the country.

On Wednesday, the barrel price for crude oil futures climbed to $82.89, off of Tuesday’s all-year low, after the Energy Information Administration turned in four-week results of slumping demand, following a five-month trend. The consumer call for oil byproducts has fallen as gasoline costs have risen but the jump in crude-oil prices Wednesday was powered by speculation that the Federal Reserve will pump more money into the economy to stimulate its growth.

The spring and summer seasons tend to be toughest on gas prices. This year was no exception, but there were outside forces like civil unrest in the Mideast and the flooding that overwhelmed much of Mississippi that disrupted production, keeping prices higher than they might normally have been through July.

Prices typically peak the first two weeks of May, like they did this year at $3.98 a gallon on May 5. Then prices moderate some before climbing again ahead of the Memorial Day weekend. This year, however, prices went down slightly, to $3.79 a gallon by May 30.

Bucking the historical pattern again, they tumbled to $3.57 a gallon by the Independence Day weekend, according to AAA. But they inched back up this year after the holiday and have stayed at those loftier levels until this week.

A positive U.S. weekly jobs report helped ease investors' recession fears, boosting the Dow Jones industrial average by 423.37 points, or 3.95%, to 11,143.31 after a plunge of 519 points Wednesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 51.88 points, or 4.63%, to 1,172.64. The Nasdaq composite index jumped 111.63 points, or 4.69%, to 2,492.68. Gold futures fell 2% to $1,748 an ounce.

In New York futures trading, crude oil for September delivery slipped as low at $81.03 a barrel on French debt concerns but recovered along with equity markets to close at $85.72 a barrel, up $2.83.

Still, energy analyst Fadel Gheit called the overall decline in oil prices — down nearly $14 a barrel since late July — "a very ominous sign."

"Oil is crashing because there is less demand for it. There haven't been any really good economic signs that we can attribute to this," said Gheit, senior energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.

The dearth of encouraging news could have another dampening effect: Nervous consumers are more likely to hold on to any extra money that lower pump prices would bring rather than spend it to help stimulate the economy.

"It's kind of like getting a reduced price for Dodger tickets at a time when the team is kind of awful," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, an energy-tracking company based in Wall, N.J.

In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.76 on Thursday, down from $3.815 a week earlier, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report, a daily survey of fuel retailers based on credit card receipts. Nationally, the average was $3.62 a gallon, down from $3.703 a week earlier.

Earlier this week, oil dropped to its lowest levels since September, eventually closing at $79.30 a barrel, well off its high for the year of nearly $114 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Analysts are thus predicting that the average price for gasoline in the U.S. will fall in the coming weeks, with the predicted size of the decline ranging from 30 cents to 50 cents a gallon.

"If oil remains low, the national average for gasoline will fall to $3.25 to $3.40 in the next two to three weeks as retailers slowly lower their prices to reflect their drop in cost," said Patrick DeHaan, senior energy analyst for GasBuddy.com, a website that lists retail gasoline prices.

Though motorists would welcome such relief, some say they aren't in a hurry to spend the savings.

"It would be nice, but I think this is such a bad economy that we are still worse off now than we were last year. We would save the money," said Henry C. Chen, 51, a driver's education and health teacher at Bellflower High School.

Chen considers himself lucky: He and his wife, Susan, have jobs and health benefits. But a home renovation three years ago left them short on savings.

So the couple look for the cheapest gasoline and religiously use coupons on household items. Henry Chen is nursing a 1998 Volkswagen Passat rather than shelling out for a newer car and higher insurance premiums in exchange for potentially better gas mileage.