The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (HPA) required it. It passed to House on a voice vote and the Senate by unanimous consent and was signed by President Clinton.
After sales paid off the debt that has been incurred from the expansion of scope of the helium program in the 1960 Helium Act, which was one of the main points of the HPA, it was update by the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 (which passed the House 394-1, and the Senate 97-2, and was signed by President Obama).
Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public turning into private hands is ideologically pure for libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically stupid it might be.
Neoliberal capitalism is founded on absorbing parts of libertarian thinking. The "capitalism" moniker of today used by ideologues is coupled to the meaning of it given by neoliberals.
It's been coopted, not necessarily capitalism means "everything should be private", the current flavour of capitalist ideology wants that but other versions of capitalism don't put that as a foundational Ideological tenet.
I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.
In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action.
Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...
Biden is an anti-abortion Catholic Zionist who wouldn't even do anything (but empty talk) to raise the minimum wage during high inflation. He enabled a genocide so his gods would reward him. I guess he would be a radical commie to the extreme far right. Nixon, JFK, LBJ and Lincoln, for example, signed into law actual left policies (whether they agreed with them or not-- none were lefties).
Words have meaning. Someone a bit left of a Nazi is not on the Left even if they are to the left of the person speaking.
The Democrats are a right-wing party. They spend more energy attacking the left than they do, the Republicans. Look at what they did to the center-left Sanders and their constant lawfare to keep left parties, like the Greens and Peace and Freedom, off the ballot and out of the debates (last election, the Greens spent half their campaign funds fighting these frivolous lawsuits from the Democratic party who seek to subvert democracy [Republicans attack anyone more left/darker than them, through voter suppression and other techniques to also subvert democracy]). There is very little daylight between the two. They serve the same masters, Oligarchs and Israel.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
- Julius Nyerere
The GOP isn't "crypto-libertarian" by any stretch of the imagination. That's probably even more absurd than the people who suggest the GOP is "financially conservative".
They'll ride it forever. My dad still insists "Protecting the environment is conservative, look at the EPA made by Nixon" as if there hasn't been clear and deliberate anti-environmental policy since then.
After 30 years of empirical reality demonstrating that if you want a government that is responsible with money, you must vote democrat, Donald Trump was still voted in because "He's good for the economy"
Late response but I can't leave the assertion that voting Democrat results in fiscal responsibility unchallenged. Their experiment with neoliberal economics and aggressive disinterest in pursuing anti-trust and anti-monopolistic policy have bankrupted most of rural America. At this point if fiscal responsibility is a goal you'd pretty much have to vote 3rd party or independent (for as much good as that does anyone).
