Congress votes to stop shipments to oil reserves

Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to challenge President Bush to temporarily halt the daily shipment of thousands of barrels of oil into the government's emergency reserve.

Lawmakers disagreed on what -- if any -- impact the suspension might have on gasoline prices and acknowledged that it was but "a modest step" in addressing public anger over soaring energy costs.

Bush has steadfastly refused to stop shipments of about 70,000 barrel barrels of oil a day into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on the Gulf Coast. The reserve, created to respond to major oil supply disruptions, holds 701 million barrels and is at 97 percent of capacity.

"There is no evidence that [suspending shipments] will affect the price of oil or gasoline in a meaningful way," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

The Senate voted 97-1 to suspend the shipments for the rest of the year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., voted against the measure.

Hours later, the House followed suit, voting 385-25 to stop the deliveries. The votes don't compel Bush to act because the measures differ somewhat and would need to be reconciled before final congressional approval.

Still the votes were symbolic, in their strong bipartisan support -- including the entire Minnesota delegation -- of lawmakers' frustrations at not being able to agree on anything more substantive in response to public anger over near $4 a gallon gasoline and oil prices in the $125 a barrel range.

Democrats controlling Congress are leaving difficult decisions on automatic tax increases to the next president and the newly elected Congress under a freshly negotiated House-Senate blueprint for the upcoming budget year.

The fiscal 2009 budget plan worked out between House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., and his Senate counterpart, Kent Conrad, D-N.D., awards an approximately 4 percent increase on average to nondefense Cabinet budgets passed by Congress each year. But it makes no effort to rein in the cost of federal benefit programs such as Medicare.

Conrad said he anticipates the nonbinding budget plan would pass both House and Senate by the end of next week.

On taxes, the measure would let many of President Bush's tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of 2010. Conrad said the compromise retains a Senate plan to renew tax cuts aimed at the middle class, including the $1,000 per child credit, relief from the marriage penalty, estate tax cuts and the 10 percent tax rate on the first $7,825 of income for individuals.

But there's not enough money to extend cuts on income tax rates, capital gains and dividend income and produce a surplus under the Democratic plan, which rejects Bush's proposed cuts to domestic programs.

Packed with subsidies and watered-down revisions, the massive bill faces a promised presidential veto. The big political unknown is whether enough Republicans will abandon Bush to render him powerless.

Bush wanted the bill to ban all subsidy payments to farmers with incomes exceeding $200,000. Instead, the bill bans one form of subsidy to farmers with agricultural incomes exceeding $750,000.

A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate is needed to overcome a veto. That margin is all but guaranteed in the Senate, but the House will be a closer call.