Biden to the DNC: 'They're Mad I Used That Authority to Lower Gas Prices by $1.50 a Gallon' (February 3, 2023)

On the evening of February 3, 2023, President Biden addressed the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown hotel [1]. A month after Republicans took control of the House, he used the speech to contrast his record with theirs, and to explain why many working-class voters had left his party. This video shows two passages from that speech. Quotes are from the official transcript published by the American Presidency Project [1].

Key Moments

”Did you ever think we’d be in a situation where blue-collar workers would vote Republican?”

Biden described how manufacturing towns had been “hollowed out” as jobs moved overseas. “When those towns were hollowed out, something else was lost: our pride, a sense of self-esteem, sense of self-worth. Those of you who are over 40, did you ever think we’d be in a situation where blue-collar workers would vote Republican?” he asked. “No!” some in the audience answered. “No, no, let’s — we’ve got to be honest, man. Because they think we forgot them. They think we don’t care,” Biden said. “A lot of them came to believe that the Democratic Party stopped caring about them” [1].

”They’re mad I used that authority to lower gas prices by $1.50 a gallon”

Turning to the new House majority, he said: “They campaigned on fiscal responsibility, but the first bill to pass the House of Representatives added $114 billion to the deficit. The first one. They introduced another bill to limit the President’s authority over the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because they’re mad I used that authority to lower gas prices by $1.50 a gallon. Period” [1].

”A 30-percent national sales tax”

“They introduced a bill that will eliminate the IRS and replace it with a 30-percent national sales tax,” Biden continued. “That means 30 percent on groceries, gasoline, clothing, school supplies, medicine, big-ticket items like rent and cars. Shifting the entire burden to the working class and middle class of America. It’s not going to happen” [1].

Fact Check

“Added $114 billion to the deficit.” Close. The first bill the new House passed, H.R. 23, would have rescinded IRS funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that it “would decrease outlays by $71 billion and decrease receipts by $186 billion over the 2023-2032 period,” a net increase in deficits of about $115 billion, because less enforcement money means less tax collected [2].
“Lower gas prices by $1.50 a gallon.” Overstated. Prices had fallen by about that much from their peak: the national average was $5.006 a gallon in the week of June 13, 2022, and $3.489 in the week of January 30, 2023 [3]. But the Treasury Department’s own analysis credited the reserve releases with a much smaller share: it found that “President Biden’s historic SPR release, in coordination with IEA partners, lowered the price of gasoline by 17 cents to 42 cents per gallon” [4]. By Treasury’s estimate, then, most of the decline came from something other than the reserve releases.
“A 30-percent national sales tax.” Defensible as a number, misleading as a description of support. The FairTax bill, H.R. 25, set a 23 percent tax-inclusive rate; “because $23 is about 30% of $77, some tax analysts — and Democrats, like Biden — say the actual sales tax rate would be 30%,” FactCheck.org explained. But it also found that few Republicans had publicly supported the bill, “a plan that has almost no chance of becoming law, or even passing in the GOP-led House of Representatives” [5]. The bill would have replaced federal income, payroll and estate taxes rather than adding to them [5].
Blue-collar voters. Biden was describing a long-running shift, not citing a statistic. (See our article on his November 2022 claim that the country was “going through hell” for how he made the economic case that fall.)

Background: The Reserve Bill

The bill Biden referred to was H.R. 21, the Strategic Production Response Act, which would have tied future emergency sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a plan for expanding oil and gas leasing on federal lands. The White House issued a formal veto threat on January 23 [8], and during the House debate Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana read the threat aloud and challenged its claims (see our article on Scalise’s floor speech). The House passed the bill on January 27 by 221 to 205 [9]. The reserve itself fell to about 347 million barrels in July 2023 [6].

What Happened Next

H.R. 21: In the Senate, the bill was referred to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and never received a vote [10].
The IRS money: The June 2023 debt ceiling deal included a smaller cut than H.R. 23 had sought. Rep. French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said it would stop “nearly $2 billion of spending stopped of that $80 billion that was to be spent over 10 years for hiring IRS agents,” CBS News reported [7].
The reserve: The Energy Department refilled part of the reserve; by January 2025 it held about 395 million barrels [6].