Strategic move
With leadership like this, it's tempting to hope for a little insider trading in Washington.
In a near-unanimous decision -- a sure sign any vote is driven by polls -- the House and Senate voted Tuesday to suspend shipments of crude oil to the nation's emergency stockpile.
Citing a need to reduce both dependence upon foreign oil and demand, our lawmakers once again have attempted to stir up hope with a dodge -- attached to a bill regarding flood insurance reform, no less.
Analysts, and even some lawmakers voting for the bill, agree the proposal to halt stockpiling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve through 2008 will have no effect at the pump -- making the misguided gas-tax holiday put forth by White House coveters appear brilliant by comparison.
America diverts about 70,000 barrels a day to the SPR, massive storage facilities in Texas and Louisiana that hold up to 727 million barrels of the juice that keeps the nation running.
It's there for good reason. Although like so many other examples of how the government has let its people down, neglect has put the American infrastructure at risk.
In simpler, slower times, the reserve would have kept the nation running for weeks, maybe months.
In truly dire circumstances, the SPR could have kept the military and crucial supply lines running while the nation waged war, recovered from a massive natural disaster or re-established alternate foreign supplies.
Now that reserve, still the largest known of its kind, would keep America running at its current pace for approximately 60 hours. To repeat, we wouldn't get through the rest of this week with that oil supply -- not that we have the refining capacity to process crude that quickly anyway, but that's another policy failure for another time.
Americans use 300 times the proposed SPR reduction every day; 70,000 barrels is a barely seen sliver of a cut of 0.003 percent.
Black gold pumps through the veins of this country, giving it life and making it virile. It's the fuel that transformed this country into the greatest, freest and richest society this world will ever know.
We know the addiction must come to an end, but what choice does the average consumer or business have when there are lights to be turned on, invoices to print, presses to roll, deliveries to be made, widgets to be manufactured, kids to take to soccer practice, dinner to be cooked, life to be lived?
And what has Washington delivered? What leadership have legislators provided other than the creation of cash cows in the form of alternative energy subsidies -- handouts that don't even compare to the gravy poured over Big Oil's books each year?
Empty posturing, over and over, and then they expect us to believe this "relief" is a valid enough reason to nod sleepily and send them back to their D.C. throne?
It's a sham: 70,000 barrels a day of supply is a drip in the 20.6-million-barrel-a-day river of demand. The market won't register a blip. Drivers won't notice the change.
And yet each of our legislators will send press releases to their local papers lauding their hard work to ease their constituents' pain. Come re-election time, each will claim they went above and beyond to help during the gas crisis of '08.
They've done little except preside over a body that annually promises to help and still takes nearly a third of the average American taxpayer's hard-earned paycheck.
Our only hope is our lawmakers know something we don't. Maybe on a junket to lavish and oppressive Saudi Arabia, one of our senators got a tip gas will be back below $2.50 in 2009. Maybe, just maybe, legislators caught wind of an unadvertised sale the rest of us aren't supposed to know about, and they're waiting until the price is right.
Corruption, in this case, would be a drastic improvement over incompetence.
Editorial by Ron Fields