House bid to sell oil from reserve fails
You've got to love Republican logic:
The House of Representatives on Thursday failed to pass legislation intended to cool off gasoline prices by requiring the government to sell 70 million barrels of light sweet crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the national stockpile.Bush wants to give the oil companies drilling rights all over the place, so he objects to tapping into "a strategic reserve".Democrats had pushed the legislation, hoping to lower surging oil prices by putting more of the reserve's light sweet crude, sought by refiners, on the market. Sweet crude is desirable because it has less sulphur and is more easily refined into gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products.
The White House had threatened to veto the measure, arguing that Congress should work toward increasing domestic supply rather than tap into a strategic reserve.
Although the House voted 268 to 157 in favor of the legislation, the measure fell short of obtaining the two-thirds "yes" vote that is required when the chamber suspends its rules to act quickly on a bill.
That wasn't the argument when he took Clinton's projected ten year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion and turned it into a $415 billion deficit in part by giving $630 billion in tax cuts to the richest 1% of the population. And that's not even the true size of the deficit:
Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It’s like pretending you’re richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion “nominal” deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565 billion.So you can spend reserves as long as they are financial reserves and you are doling the money out to the richest people in the land, but can't touch reserves of oil which are put aside for precisely such a time as now.
The logic of these people is simply mind-bending.
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2 comments:
I was under the impression that the SOR was a reserve for emergencies, rather than merely because of high prices. And openning up the reserves arent going to do any more than provide a band-aid anyway (nor, for that matter, will any of the drilling schemes being put forth by various people). The only way which we are going to solve the current energy crisis is to USE LESS OIL. The beauty of using less oil is that is also solves, or at least lessens, that tricky little problem of global warming that some folks keep talking about.
I understand your point, I was more interested in Bush's lack of concern when it came to financial reserves.
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