By: Jeffrey Klein
Examiner.com

The monumentous attention surrounding the extension of the so-called “Payroll Tax Holiday” and long-term federal unemployment benefits, along with the Medicare “doc fix” legislation, concluded today, when the measure was passed by both the House and Senate, according to an article in FOXNews this afternoon.

As President Obama has repeatedly stated, getting the payroll tax holiday extension was an election-year priority, because the extra $1,000 per year received by the average middle class worker earning $50,000 per year, is “critical” to our economic recovery–and presumably, his reelection.

Then using that as a benchmark of importance, President Obama and his reelection hopes are about to get run over by a gasoline tanker truck.

Why?

The cost of gasoline and diesel motor fuel have risen by 93% since his inauguration day, from $1.84 per gallon to $3.52 now, as reported in Doug McKelway’s FOXNews article today.

This has robbed each American family of about $2,000 of disposable income per year.

In relative family budget terms, fuel costs represent 6.9% today, versus only 3.6% in 2009, leading to a staggering reduction of 3.3% in disposable income.

To put this into perspective, the “Personal Savings Rate” in the U.S. tipped just over 2% of GDP at the turn of the century (1999-2000), but has since fallen off that mark to the point where for the past two years–it has been below zero.

As consumer spending represents 70% of the U.S. economy, when fuel costs decrease disposable income by an average of $2,000 per family, per year, for the 112 million family units living in the U.S., it extracts a dramatic total of about $224 billion per year from the economy.

Why is the cost of fuel rising in the U.S.?

Put succinctly, President Obama’s lack of a petroleum centric energy policy–recognizing that the United States runs on petroleum products to virtually the exclusion of anything else, and will continue to do so for decades–renders the U.S. reliant on foreign oil in large part, particularly from the middle east, to the tune of about 10 million barrels per day net of U.S. production.

Add to that, his completely shutting down gulf oil platform production and refusal to open up a microscopic portion of the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve and coastal areas for drilling, where “proven” reserves exist–versus the totally phony act of granting “exploration” leases on millions of acres of federal land with very questionable geological promise.

Finally, his recent second refusal to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline project from Canada–also cost the immediate creation of at least 20,000 high paying construction jobs.

One administration critic, Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, suggests the present spike is unique. “President Obama over the last three years has done everything in his power to cripple the increase in domestic supply and production. Clearly, world markets are taking a look at that and keeping prices high in response to American energy policy.”

President Barack Obama’s obsession with “winning the future,” focusing time and losing vast sums of taxpayer money on alternative energy programs, will hopefully scuttle his current reelection bid.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Jeffrey Klein