No Oil for Babies: Congress just killed only program that saved something for the future

The Social Security Trust Fund is empty. Medicare is empty. We’re borrowing $400 billion a year to balance the federal budget, rather than pay for it now.

And today, Congress voted to kill the last program that saved anything for the future.

A day after the Senate passed the measure 97-1, the House voted 285-25 to stop buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, America’s oil stockpile for an emergency.

Price too high? The U.S. was buying 70,000 barrels a day for the Strategy Petroleum Reserve. That’s a tiny part of the 85,000,000 barrels a day the U.S. consumes, and yet Congress couldn’t see a reason to keep filling the SPR, which is a series of salt caverns near the Gulf of Mexico. The stockpile is full to 97 percent of its targeted size, so yes, it’s not nothing. It’s 560 million barrels of oil -- almost one week’s worth.

This week, Congress decided that, with oil selling for $120 a barrel, we should stop buying it for the SPR. The price might well go down soon, members of Congress say, but who knows? A price reflects the fact that about half the market is calculating the price will go down, and the other half believes the price will keep going up.

It’s unnerving to find oneself with a government that won’t prepare for a crisis and won’t save anything for the future. It’s as if they don’t believe there will be a future. That lack of faith may be a self-fulfilling.

Frank Warner

Comments

[Neo]

Caught on C-SPAN the other day ..

total liabilites of Social Security ..
$66 trillion

total value of all assests in US ..
$59 trillion

[Frank Warner]

Here’s an excellent breakdown on America’s unfunded obligations. It adds up to $99 trillion, or $99 with 12 zeroes after it.

I talked about it here, last November.