May 14, 2008
BY GEORGE LOBSENZ
In a brief pause in their partisan war over energy policy, congressional Democrats and Republicans voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to force a resistant President Bush to stop
putting oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with the goal of re-routing those supplies to the market and thus tamping down gasoline prices.
The Senate voted 97-1 to suspend shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for the rest of the year and the House was expected to follow suit Tuesday evening, with
most Republicans abandoning the president--and their former positions in favor of continuing the SPR fill--under the weight of enormous public anger over rising gasoline
prices.
But while voting to stop sending 70,000 barrels per day to the underground Gulf Coast storage facility, Republicans said the legislation at best would only shave a few cents
off prices at the pump.
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