Gasoline and diesel fuel prices hit an all-time high on Tuesday, just two months after the last record-breaking prices were recorded.
The nationwide average price for a gallon of regular gas was $4.37, a 17-cent jump just in the past week according to AAA, while diesel clocked in at $5.55 per gallon. That surpasses record high prices from early March, a surge that touched off a wave of talk in Congress about possibly waiving the federal gas tax, and which caused several states to create state-level gas tax holidays.
Gasoline prices — always a pocketbook issue for Americans — are a key driver of current inflation levels, which President Joe Biden acknowledged Tuesday.
“I want every American to know that I am taking inflation very seriously,” Biden said during a speech Tuesday. “It is my top domestic priority.”
Biden’s speech came a day before April’s consumer price index numbers are released. March’s CPI numbers showed that prices increased by 8.5 percent over the last year, a 40-year high.
A year ago, the nationwide average price for a gallon of regular gas was $2.96 and diesel was $3.11 per gallon.
Some Democratic members of Congress have proposed to create a temporary holiday on the 18.3 cent-per-gallon federal gas tax, though Republicans and the Democrats’ own leadership is not on board. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they will pursue legislation to try to penalize oil companies for price gouging, though any such legislation is sure to face Republican resistance.
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