Thune, Rounds Vote for Oil Reserve Sale and Social Security Disability Reform

Some days (i.e., days that end in -y) I can’t figure Gordon Howie out. This morning the arch-conservative is on the Intertubes berating Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds for cutting entitlements and government interference in the marketplace:

South Dakota Senators Mike Rounds and John Thune were among the Republican Senators who voted “YES” to this attack against seniors in America.  The money paid into Social Security by millions of Americans was simply scooped out of the program in this late-night deal.  $150 Billion dollars… GONE… in the blink of an eye.

It was a major part of the “Budget Deal” that REMOVED the debt ceiling and sold 58 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves [Gordon Howie, “Rounds and Thune Take $150 Billion from Social Security,” The Right Side, 2015.11.04].

As you can tell from the links Howie includes in that passage, Howie is steamed about what he characterizes as GOP capitulation on the budget. Thune and Rounds refused to crash the federal government (again) and voted for a two-year budget bill that spares us any more debt-ceiling brinkmanship until the next Presidency.

Howie seems less steamed about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sale, which will drain a bit more than 8% of our current 695.1-million-barrel stockpile (out of a maximum capacity of 713.5 million barrels) over eight years. By law, the SPR must maintain enough oil to replace 90 days’ worth of imported oil. U.S. oil imports have declined in raw numbers since 2005 and currently make up just 27% of U.S. consumption, compared to roughly 60% through most of the Bush II Administration. Thanks to fuel efficiency, lower demand, and higher domestic production, we don’t need to keep as much oil on hand to ride out a foreign embargo.

We sold 23 million SPR barrels in 1996 for deficit reduction. The proceeds of the sale authorized in this year’s budget deal might reduce the deficit by a percentage point. But the budget deal puts some of that money to use ensuring that we can put the SPR to work in an emergency:

the budget deal also authorizes the Department of Energy (DOE) to spend up to $2 billion from additional SPR oil sales to ensure the SPR’s oil can reach the market in an emergency—and this is an urgent priority. Since the purpose of the SPR today is effectively to temper price shocks from global supply disruptions, not just replace barrels to a particular refinery, it must be able to add to the total world supply.

…This is an issue of oil flow, not oil stocks. The SPR’s intended drawdown rate is 4.4 million barrels per day, but today we cannot release anywhere close to that rate [Jason Bordoff, “Selling SPR Oil in Budget Deal Bolsters Our Energy Security,” The Hill, 2015.10.29].

Howie’s complaint about the Social Security cuts in the budget also misfires. The deal prevented 20% cuts in Social Security disability insurance by transferring dollar figures from the Social Security Trust Fund, a budget fix that has been done eleven times before without throwing Grandma in a snowbank. The budget deal also makes some minor money-saving reforms to disability benefits:

Several of the changes are aimed at rooting out waste: The bill expands the use of investigation units that partner with local law enforcement agencies to track down people who might be gaming the system. It also forbids ex-felons from making disability benefits determinations, beefs up penalties for fraud, and instructs the Social Security Administration to move everyone onto electronic recordkeeping, in an effort to avoid overpayments.

…Congressional aides expect the disability insurance tweaks in the budget will save $5 billion over 10 years, which is peanuts compared to the program’s $141 billion annual cost. The fact that Republicans didn’t win bigger cuts, however, is a victory for the Obama administration and a relief for disabled people and those who work with them [Lydia DePillis, “Budget Deal Tweaks Disability Benefits—and Not Only to Save Money,” Washington Post: Wonkblog, 2015.10.27].

I’m as eager as Howie to find bad votes to throw back in Thune’s face in the 2016 election. But saying that Thune and his little buddy Rounds have imperiled senior citizens and national security with these two provisions of the budget deal is incorrect.