Pay Like It’s 2009! Illinois Gas Station Offers Pre-Obama Gas Prices

The nationwide “Obama’s Failing Agenda Tour” is offering drivers cheap 2009 gas prices to protest the President's energy policies. But not everyone is interested in the politics of the matter.

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D. Sharon Pruitt / Pink Sherbet Photography / Getty Images

When drivers approached the Road Ranger Gas Station in Lombard, Ill., last Friday, they were surely surprised to see gasoline selling for almost $2 less than the usual price. But this sale wasn’t an act of pure generosity or a sign of any drastic economic change. Instead, it was part of a protest aimed squarely at President Obama’s energy policies, and the cost — $1.88 per gallon of regular unleaded gas — mirrored the price when Obama took office in 2009, CBS reports.

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The Chicago-area station, where fuel typically starts at $3.70 a gallon, briefly participated in “Obama’s Failing Agenda Tour,” organized by an advocacy group called Americans for Prosperity. The group has traveled nationwide to offer gasoline at 2009 prices for a few hundred drivers at each stop. The tour’s director, David From, told CBS that the President is too averse to new oil drilling, particularly here at home.

From posted on the Patch News site for a nearby suburb, Grayslake, to alert residents that his tour would be stopping at seven locations in Illinois. Now, the organization has moved on to Ohio.

Customers, however, are perhaps more interested in the savings than the politics. “I am here because it’s $1.88,” one Lombard driver told CBS. “I am not against the president’s policies.”

Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, fervently political or indifferent, one thing holds true: no one wants to pass up a good deal.

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