I always warn that when the US Senate votes unanimously on something outside of national security, Americans should beware.

Congress voted overwhelmingly to suspend putting 70,000 barrels/day (the US consumes about 21 Million/day) of oil into a strategic reserve facility. This reserve allows the US to operate for a short period of time should oil deliveries cease for some reason or demand increases exponentially for some reason.

The measure is likely to be one of the few Congress approves this year in response to public angst at the pump. Democrats and Republicans agreed on little else Tuesday to bring down prices.

Senators approved the measure by a veto-proof majority of 97 to 1. The two Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, returned to the Capitol from the campaign trail to vote for the measure. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive GOP nominee, supported the measure but was absent for the vote.

The House later followed suit, approving it 385 to 25.

Since everyone is campaigning, they want to be seen as people who make it better for the American people. This move is likely to impact fuel prices by about a nickel a gallon. However, the average fuel price is expected to rise more than that over the summer. So, the real impact to your pocket is going to be nil, zilch, nada. The government is going to tell you that you saved money that you will never see. We are talking about oil that represents less than 1% of consumption. This is the most expensive possible way to save Americans money because it actually does nothing of the kind.

Rather than do something significant - maybe actually act toward some smaller level of foreign oil dependency, these knuckleheads are going to risk our ability to use stored fuel if some disaster (earthquake, hurricane anyone?) impacts the flow of oil to the US.

Vote-mongering.

Nancy Pelosi is sending President Bush a letter.

WASHINGTON, April 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the following letter today to President George W. Bush urging him to sign into law legislation that Congress has passed to help American families with the rising price of gasoline.

“I respectfully ask you again to work with the Congress to allow the Justice Department to pursue oil cartel price-fixing, allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to investigate and punish price gougers, end taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and invest those funds in renewable American energy. Lastly, your Administration must use the authority given to it by the Congress to end market manipulation. We cannot wait to act in the face of these prices increases,” she wrote.

Big Oil! Boy they are just soaking us, are they not?

The US Consumes 388,600,000 gallons of gasoline per day. This is 141,839,000,000 gallons per year.

Big Oil and Retailers markup represents about 9% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. About 32 cents per gallon profit at $3.50 a gallon. The Federal Government gets about 19 cents per gallon in taxes and the states average about 23 cents per gallon in taxes.  So taxes represent 42 cents per gallon. Now, you tell me who is gouging.

Out of a cost per gallon of $3.50, Big oil makes 32 cents. The rest is cost of oil, refining, transpertaion and distribution, and taxes.

Both John McCain and Nancy Pelosi have called for legislation to help Americans struggling with fuel prices. Notice the differences in approach. With John McCain’s model - the price of gasoline can be reduced almost instantly and push money into the economy almost immediately. With Nancy Pelosi’s model, oil companies will start cutting costs - which always means cutting jobs - which takes money out of the economy. Yet, with her way the government will get paid at the detriment of Americans.

The difference is Pelosi wants the oil companies to give the fuel away, and John McCain wants the government to stop gouging Americans.