Biden's energy secretary laughed out loud when a reporter asked what the administration planned to do about soaring gas prices.
Now the Democrats who cheered those prices are running against them heading into November.
Cruz just named the Texas Senate candidate running against gas prices who went on camera calling America's oil industry a dying relic.
The Party That Cheered Five Dollar Gas Is Now Running Midterm Ads Against Four Dollar Gas
Gas prices hit five dollars a gallon under Joe Biden.
They dropped to three dollars the first year Trump was back in office.
Senator Ted Cruz told Hannity that the national average runs about four dollars today – still a full dollar cheaper than Biden's worst.
But Democrat candidates are blanketing the airwaves with ads hammering Republicans over what it costs to fill a tank.
Ted Cruz is calling it what it is.
"Remember, these are the same Democrats who said they wanted ten-dollar-a-gallon gas," Cruz told Sean Hannity.
He's not wrong.
Obama's energy secretary Steven Chu went on record in 2008 saying his goal was to push American gas prices to the levels Europeans pay – where drivers were paying roughly twice what Americans paid at the time.
Biden's pick to lead the Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein, argued in 2015 that gas prices were dangerously cheap and pushed for a gas tax hike to drive the price higher.
That is not fringe thinking buried on some radical website.
That is the official economic doctrine of the people who ran Biden's energy and budget policy.
Now the same political movement is flooding TV markets with ads about pump prices – as if they had nothing to do with it.
James Talarico Called Texas Oil Dead While Running for Senate on Gas Prices
Cruz didn't stop at the general charge.
He put a name to it on national television: James Talarico, the Democrat running against Republican attorney general Ken Paxton for Texas's U.S. Senate seat.
At a 2020 Sierra Club Zoom forum, Talarico compared the entire Texas oil and gas industry to the cassette tape.
"We all know that Texas has been a leader in oil and gas, but in many ways that's like being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s," Talarico said on camera.
"That industry is not gonna last."
Talarico told the same audience that capitalism was an "oppressive system" tied to white supremacy – one of three interconnected systems, he said, that needed to come down.
When the video resurfaced last month, Talarico's campaign called him a "proud capitalist" who has always supported the Texas oil and gas industry.
That pivot lasted about as long as a cassette tape in a car without a deck.
Talarico leads Paxton by a narrow margin in recent polling, and Texas is on a short list of Senate contests that will likely settle majority control in January.
Democrats haven't won a Senate seat in Texas in nearly four decades.
A candidate who went on camera predicting the death of Texas's most important industry is now a central figure in the Democrat push to blame Republicans for gas prices.
The Census Report on Income and Poverty Democrats Cannot Run From in November
Cruz ended the Hannity segment with two economic figures that almost no one in the corporate press has given a headline.
The U.S. Census Bureau released its annual income and poverty report on September 15th – and the numbers shattered records that should be leading every newscast in America.
Real median household income hit $87,460 in 2025 – a record that breaks every figure the Census Bureau has tracked since it began measuring household income in 1967.
The official poverty rate fell for the second consecutive year to 10.2 percent – also the lowest in the history of the government's data.
Child poverty fell to 13.4 percent, a record low.
Hispanic poverty dropped to 13.9 percent – a record low in data available since 1973.
Black household median income rose 4.8 percent year over year.
The numbers are not debatable.
They come from the same Census Bureau Democrats cite when the numbers go the other way.
"President Trump's proven economic agenda delivered historic working-class prosperity in his first year back in office, with record-high real income and record-low poverty – breaking the records he set during his first term," the White House said in a statement.
The party that wanted ten-dollar gas is running on four-dollar gas.
Cruz just made sure America knows the difference.
Sources:
- Jeff Poor, "Cruz: Same Democrats Campaigning on Gas Prices 'Said They Wanted $10-a-Gallon Gas,'" Breitbart, October 1, 2026.
- "Census: U.S. Poverty Rate Hits Lowest on Record as Incomes Set New High," Breitbart, September 16, 2026.
- "James Talarico Calls Capitalism 'Oppressive,' Echoes DSA Rhetoric on 'Dismantling' It," Breitbart, September 1, 2026.
- Jonathan Turley, "Talarico Brings a Touch of Trotsky to the Texas Senate Race," Fox News, September 2026.
- "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2025," U.S. Census Bureau, September 15, 2026.