House Republicans continue to not do very well at the whole "governing" thing, probably because every caucus meeting is filled with new ideas to shut government down rather than abide its continued operation, but they remain quite devoted to their Twitter accounts. Twitter remains the best technology for random acts of spite and grievance, and given that most House Republicans based their entire personas on spite and grievance, it's a near-perfect match.
There, that's the short version of "every one of the official House Republican Twitter accounts is a garbage fire." And that's the short explanation for this tweet, one of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pointless toddler-ass whines that these people devote themselves to even as they refuse to do anything to solve the supposed problems:
Oh no! Twenty-six million barrels are being sold from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves, the government stockpile of oil meant to ease market shocks during times of national crisis! Is that a lot? Is it a problem? Are we doomed? Eh, who cares. The most important thing to know is that it is President Joe Biden's fault. Oh, except it's ... not.
As the Fox "Business" story eventually gets around to mentioning but which, as counterexample, Reuters calls out in the very first paragraph of its own reporting, the sale of 26 million barrels was mandated by Congress. Congress passed a law to make it happen.
The more accurate House Republicans tweet would not be "Joe Biden is draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve—which is supposed to be used for emergencies!" but something more like "Hi, Congress has mandated the sale of 26 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and we couldn't get our heads out of our asses long enough to pass a new bill cancelling the sale."
The problem is that the mandate that 26 million barrels of oil be sold from the reserve in 2023 wasn't tied to the actual condition of the reserve; ordering the future sale of reserve-hosted oil in order to claim the theoretical revenue is yet another gimmick lawmakers use to offset new spending. The mandate simply orders the administration to sell that oil. Last year, however, the administration released a whopping 180 million barrels during efforts to stabilize oil prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international pariah status roiled world oil prices, creating the sort of unforeseen market shock that the reserves are frequently used to blunt. That means the reserves are currently low—but it doesn't matter. The law says the Department of Energy has to sell 26 million barrels this year no matter what the status is.
Reuters reports that the administration "had considered cancelling" this year's 26 million-barrel sale given that last year's releases were so large, but cancelling the sale "would have required Congress to act."
For some unknown and mysterious reason, then, the Biden administration believed that there was no plausible chance of getting House Republicans to actually pass any damn bill fixing the problem. Can't imagine why they thought that. Go figure.
At the same time, the Department of Energy is working to buy back oil to replace what was drained last year, which makes all of this particularly silly. But they're not in a hurry, and oil prices haven't dropped enough to warrant large purchases yet. None of it amounts to a crisis, but if House Republicans even for the moment thought it did, they could have fixed it.
None of this is to say that House Republicans have completely ignored the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. Fox "Business" helpfully points out in the House Republican-provided link that Republicans just passed a bill banning the sale of any of that reserve oil to the Chinese government, and another that prohibits selling oil from the reserves in "nonemergency" situations unless it's paired with expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands.
Do either of these address the current Republican complaint? They do not. Might Republicans have used their extremely sparse legislatin' time to address the current sale, rather than sending a blowhard tweet falsely pinning the blame on Joe Biden? Certainly, if they'd wanted to.
But that would require a House Republican majority interested in doing something other than posting conspiracy theories and/or creating new venues for Jim Jordan to scream at people, and that isn't something Republicans have done for the last decade. The current Republican focus is on determining what gain they might be able to squeeze out by threatening to shutter the federal government yet again; they're not going to have time for "governing" anytime soon.
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