Robert Reich outlines three ways Democrats can lower gas prices

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Saturday broke down three things Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress can do to lower gas prices ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The Berkeley professor, author of the 2021 book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix it, was interviewed by CNN's Phil Mattingly.

Reich noted that "big oil is raking it in."

"There ought to be an attempt to have a windfall profits tax. You look at the last five years you say if there are extra profits above what we've had the last five years in this industry we're going to tax them so the industry doesn't have any incentive to continue to use a kind of price gouging of consumers and that's what's going on."

"You see it also in food, you know, Tyson food a lot of big food processors are charging a great deal of money," he continued. "They're making money hand over fist, they should not be imposing that cost on consumers right now."

That wasn't his only policy suggestion.

"The other thing the administration needs to do is enforce antitrust laws, bust up the monopolies around the country," Reich said. "My point is there are things that should and can be done right now other than relying on the federal reserve board to raise interest rates and potentially push the economy into a recession."

"The other thing that I had suggested and I think is still very important is to stop what are called stock buybacks, which are artificial ways of raising stock prices that used to be considered by the securities and exchange commission to be stock manipulation before the Reagan administration," he said. "We ought to go back to that. There's no reason that all of this excess profit ought to go to buying back shares of stock so basically shareholders can get the benefit."

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