WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The typical US family will save about $750 on gasoline in 2015 because of low oil prices that affect the price of gasoline as well as higher fuel standards, US President Barack Obama said on Friday.
Obama also said that the United States today was ahead of other countries in oil, gas, and wind power production.
On Thursday, the US Department of Labor reported that gasoline prices in the United States fell by 24 percent, and overall US producer prices decreased in January as a result of falling gas prices and a strengthened dollar.
Global oil prices have dropped by about 50 percent since June 2014. In November, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided not to cut the oil output levels, which contributed to a further slump in prices.
“The new plan, apparently, of Congressional Republicans, is to rebrand themselves as a party of the middle class,” Obama said at the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting. “I’m encouraged that they are speaking about middle class, and speaking about wages, but there is this old saying that you can’t just talk the talk, you got to walk the walk.”
Obama emphasized that if Republicans were serious about taking on specific challenges that face the American middle class, their efforts should be welcomed. “But so far, at least, the rhetoric has not matched the reality,” he added.
Fifty-one percent of Americans think the US Republican Party is mostly interested in helping the rich rather than the poor or the middle class, according to a 2013 poll by the international market research firm YouGov.
