Biden privately griped that focusing on biofuels wouldn't help lower gas prices, report says

• Biden complained focusing on biofuels was all but useless to lower gas prices.
• He dragged senior staff into the Oval Office to pepper them with questions about strategy.

President Joe Biden privately complained that his administration's plan to focus on ethanol and biofuels as a means of lowering gas prices would be unproductive, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Biden, who announced the biofuels initiative in an April trip to Iowa, later "questioned the value of the trip," and dragged his chief of staff Ron Klain into his office to press him about the effectiveness of the policy and the usefulness of the Iowa visit, sources told the Post.

The president also asked if a focus on biofuels would undermine his own administration's climate change initiatives, the Post reported.

But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, and others convinced Biden that the White House still needed to present something as a solution to the high gas prices plaguing midwesterners and all Americans.

Biden's ambivalence about his own administration's initiatives to relieve the pressures Americans face at the pump highlights the White House's struggles in clamping down on stubbornly high gas prices and persistent inflation.

Gas prices have climbed upward for the past few months, due to a shock to global energy prices stemming from Western sanctions on Moscow. High demand for oil hasn't kept pace with supply, sparking significant price increases at the gas pump.

The average for a gallon of regular gasoline hit $5 per gallon on Saturday, per AAA. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged last week that gas prices are "unlikely" to drop in the near-future. Some analysts believe it could reach $6 a gallon — and further drag down Biden's approval ratings ahead of the November midterms.

The Biden administration has scrambled to lower gas prices by releasing one million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in conjunction with employing the Defense Production Act to increase production of key minerals. Those efforts have not prevented gas prices from soaring higher, and economists say the White House has very limited options to reverse that trend.

Congressional Democrats have pitched a variety of plans including a suspension of the 18.4 cent federal tax on every gallon of gas alongside a new tax on the windfall profits of oil and gas companies. Democrats and the White House haven't coalesced around anything though, and those bills are withering in Congress due to internal splits and GOP resistance.

Biden renewed his attack on large oil companies like ExxonMobil on Friday, blaming them for raking in huge profits at the expense of boosting domestic production and providing financial relief to Americans.

"Exxon made more money than God this year," he said.