Statewide Iowa — It won’t likely make Iowans feel any better about paying more than four bucks a gallon for gasoline, but those record high prices aren’t really so high, nor are they records, according to one expert.
Herman Quirmbach, a retired economics professor at Iowa State University, says this week’s gasoline prices are indeed more expensive than the previous highest-ever prices dating back to July of 2008, but he says it’s not apples to apples.
Triple-A-Iowa says the statewide average for gas Friday was four-13 a gallon. Earlier this week, the high prices wiped out the previous high price from 2008 of four-02 a gallon. In today’s dollars, Quirmbach says that four-02 would actually be more like five-28 a gallon.
Quirmbach, a state senator from Ames and a Democrat, says multiple factors go into the price of gas, even though it’s often reduced to being a political football.
He agrees with a statement issued by a Triple-A spokesman this week which said, “There are very few things that a president can do to help lower the cost of oil, and this administration tried to do pretty much everything that it can.” In a Radio Iowa interview on Tuesday, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, placed the blame of high gas prices on the Democrat in the White House, saying: “I think Congress has set a pretty good policy for energy. This president has screwed it up.”
