Power struggle: House Republicans challenge Biden’s authority on oil reserves
Haisten Willis
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House Republicans are engaged in yet another battle with the Biden administration over just how much power a president should have, one of many President Joe Biden has seen over his two years in office.
The House passed legislation Friday to limit Biden’s ability to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while also tying any SPR sales to increasing domestic fuel development.
HOUSE PASSES GOP BILL LIMITING BIDEN RESERVE SALES AND REQUIRING OIL LEASING
“At present, the SPR’s ability to protect Americans has been put at risk by this administration,” said House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) in remarks on the House floor.
Rodgers introduced the legislation and described it last Thursday as an “urgent” policy that would help rebuild the stockpile while also preserving it for other emergency disruptions, such as hurricanes or other natural disasters.
Republicans and conservatives have decried what they describe as Biden’s abuse of executive power since taking office, most of it related to the pandemic and the still-active national public health emergency over COVID-19.
But the SPR fight gets into wider ideological issues about energy policy, with Democrats more interested in pushing green initiatives and Republicans more skeptical of government intervention. The GOP also claims Biden’s SPR drawdowns are politically motivated, coming as they did in the months before the midterm elections.
Starting in November 2021 and accelerating after Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Biden ordered hundreds of millions of barrels to be drawn from the petroleum reserve, which was created in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis.
More than 200 million barrels have been taken since Biden took office, leaving it at its lowest level in 40 years.
The House bill would limit SPR oil drawdowns “except in the case of a severe supply disruption” and would tie any sales to having the president open up more federal lands to oil and gas production. Biden has sent mixed messages on the latter point.
The bill passed 221-205 along party lines and is unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Even if it passed in Congress, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has warned that Biden would veto, saying the bill would undermine national security, cause crude oil shortages, and raise fuel prices nationwide.
The GOP-led bill “needlessly aims to weaken the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s usefulness as a tool to ensure energy security in America,” Granholm said.
In the meantime, the Biden administration has rolled out a plan to plan to refill the reserves at lower prices, but some industry groups say that plan won’t work.
It’s not the only battle Biden is waging with Congress over executive authority. Last fall, the Senate voted 62-36 to end the federal government’s emergency declaration on COVID-19, which Biden also pledged to veto. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is planning another vote in the current Congress, but he’d need a two-thirds majority from both chambers to overrule the president.
Beyond that, Biden has engaged in multiple court battles over pandemic powers, ranging from the federal mask mandate to Title 42, the employer vaccine mandate, and even the $500 billion plan to cancel student loans, which rests on the pandemic for its legal justification.
Of course, Biden is far from the first president to face accusations of executive overreach. Barack Obama took sweeping actions on immigration and publicly talked up a “pen and phone” strategy to work around Congress. Donald Trump, for his part, declared a national emergency over the southern border in order to secure funding for a wall.
Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, said accusations of executive overreach tend to accelerate any time one party controls Congress and the other has the White House. But some of Biden’s actions that were struck down by courts began under his predecessor.
“The eviction moratorium began under Trump, as did Title 42,” said Somin, also a Cato Institute scholar. “Both of those I felt were illegal when Trump did them and were still illegal when Biden continued them.”
Trump also declared the original pandemic public health emergency in March 2020, though that situation has shifted greatly in the years since.
One complaint Republicans have over the SPR drawdowns in particular is that they leave the United States vulnerable should a true energy crisis emerge. As a messaging bill, they are now on the record as opposing the drawdowns and can say they tried to sound the alarm should another emergency arise which necessitates pulling from oil reserves.
James Coleman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies energy policy, argues that the House bill may not have much of an impact even if it did pass but does serve important messaging purposes.
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“The SPR is a huge, huge issue,” he said. “It hasn’t been this empty in 40 years, which is completely unprecedented. The biggest release ever prior to this was 20 million barrels. In the last six months, we’ve had 220 million. It’s more than 10 times bigger than any previous release and for a smaller energy disruption.”