NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Bush, saying he was unaware of predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline in the coming months, told reporters Thursday that the best way to help Americans fend off high prices is for Congress to make his first-term tax cuts permanent.

"If you're out there wondering... what your life is going to be like, and you're looking at $4 a gallon, that's uncertain," Bush responded to a question posed at a White House news conference. "And when you couple that with the idea that... taxes may be going up in a couple years, that's double uncertainty."

Analysts have said that gasoline could reach $4 a gallon by this spring, due to strong demand and a change in formulation, among other reasons.

The early returns on the effects of the tax cuts have not been good.

The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see.
The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households — those least in need of additional resources — at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.
The design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II.