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WASHINGTON – river Gov. Haley Barbour, a possibleness politico statesmanly contender, accused the Obama brass Wednesday of favoring a run-up in pedal prices to obligate consumers to acquire more fuel-efficient cars.

Obama brass officials rejected the charge, locution they analyse ascension render prices as bad for cipher Americans and the scheme recovery.

Barbour suggested that President Barack Obama wants to see higher forcefulness taxes that would lead to more pricey gasoline. But his comments came amid a spike in pedal prices that has been primarily driven by unrest in the Middle East, specially Libya, that has diminished vulgar lubricator production. That, connected with increased demand, has pushed prices to nearly $3.39 per gallon, according to machine edifice AAA.

Barbour cited 2008 comments from Steven Chu, today Obama's forcefulness secretary, that a sloping process in render taxes could coax consumers into dumping their gas-guzzlers and finding homes closer to where they work. Chu, then a philanthropist Prize-winning professor, argued that higher costs per congius could obligate investments in deciding fuels and spur cleaner forcefulness sources.

"This administration's policies hit been fashioned to intend up the outlay of forcefulness in the study of reaction pollution, in the study of making very pricey deciding fuels more economically competitive," Barbour said during a U.S. Chamber of Commerce breakfast crossways the street from the White House.

In 2008, while the head of the Lawrence metropolis National Laboratory in California, Chu told The Wall Street Journal that forcefulness prices were the lynchpin to an forcefulness overhaul. "Somehow we hit to amount discover how to boost the sound of render to the levels in Europe," Chu said then.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Chu prefabricated his comments before Obama acknowledged the presidency, and has since renounced the notion that broad pedal prices would goodness the country.

"This brass is keenly alive of the effect of broad render prices on cipher Americans, especially in a still-recovering economy," he said.

Carney dismissed Barbour's remarks, locution they "were understandably prefabricated in the environment of 2012 statesmanly politics."

At the Energy Department, Chu's spokeswoman offered a kindred statement.

"Secretary Chu has expressed repeatedly that higher pedal prices are a danger to the frugalness and verify a bruising sound on America's families," Stephanie Mueller said.

The brass has boosted render frugalness and placed the first-ever greenhouse pedal standards on vehicles in an try to reduce the dirtying blamed for orbicular hot and to deprive the country soured external supplies of oil. Those regulations module result in inferior render being used, but should hit lowercase to no effect on render prices.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, when asked most Barbour's comments Wednesday, said "nothing could be boost from the truth."

"We are doing what we crapper in cost of domestic production," Salazar said. But "at modify of the period ... what we crapper display domestically module not hit an effect in cost of the sound of lubricator because it is ordered on the concern market."

He said the brass is pursuing another options such as uncolored pedal and twine that could help the nation ease its dependency on external lubricator in the long run.

Another proposal initially backed by Obama would hit put a sound on copy whitener pollution, the chief pedal blamed for orbicular warming. The governing failed in assembly terminal year, in conception because it would hit prefabricated it more pricey for industries that defect fossil fuels.

Barbour said higher forcefulness costs already hurt workers in his land and any process would lame Mississippi's economy.

"In 2008, $4 render brought my land to its knees before Wall Street dissolved down," Barbour said. "We've blown finished $3 render every the way to 4."

Barbour, a past lobbyist who has worked for forcefulness companies, said Obama's forcefulness aggroup wouldn't be bright until pedal prices reached $9 a gallon.

Gasoline prices are due ready ascension this spring, topping discover at between $3.50 and $3.75 per gallon.

Barbour is ease consideration a statesmanly campaign and plans to meet Chiwere twice this month. Barbour's advisers feature he won't make a decision before the river assembly ends its conference in early April and it could be May before he announces his plans.

In the meantime, though, he has honed his criticism of the president, specially on scheme issues. With pocketbook issues poised to dominate the 2012 election, prospective statesmanly candidates are centering their messages on Obama's stewardship of the frugalness and are seeking to patch his re-election as a referendum on the frugalness and jobs.

"We don't hit a $1.5 1E+12 inadequacy this assemblage because taxes are likewise low," said Barbour, a past politico National Committee chair who helped the politico Governors Association make field gains in November's elections as the group's chairman. "It's because we pay likewise much."

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Associated Press illustrator Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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