The Trump administration announced a deal Friday to develop a vast amount of Venezuela's oil reserves, with the U.S. taking a majority stake. Energy experts say there are many reasons to be skeptical.
Page F6From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
Congress guarantees its own funding before midterms while the Venezuela oil deal guarantees nothing at your pump.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers the way you'd run them if this were a household budget instead of a headline, because that's the only way the two stories in front of us make any sense side by side.
Item one: the House returns to Washington this week to move a package that avoids a shutdown before the midterm elections. That's a funding bill. It keeps agencies open, it keeps paychecks — including the ones on Capitol Hill — arriving on schedule, and it gets done, as these things tend to get done, right before voters are asked to render a verdict. No judgment in that; a functioning government funding itself on time is supposed to be the baseline, not the achievement. We'll note it as such: baseline, met, on schedule.…
…(cont) Item two: the U.S.-Venezuela oil deal, the one described in some corners as pump-price relief, does not lower gas prices. That's not our characterization — that's the reconciliation, straight from the reporting: the deal moves oil, it does not move the number on the sign outside the gas station. Check the filing against the table and the gap is right there, plain, no adjectives required.
So here's the ledger. On one side, the institution that funds itself gets funded, on time, with an election on the calendar. On the other side, the thing that was supposed to fund relief for everybody else — the pump price, the household line item, the number that shows up on a family's monthly sheet whether they're paying attention to Washington or not — doesn't move. One column balances. The other doesn't. Both columns belong to the same government, the same month, the same set of headlines.
Hon, that's not a coincidence you need a conspiracy to explain. It's just where the money goes and where it doesn't, filed on the same day, readable by anyone willing to read two stories instead of one. The government's operating expenses clear every time. Yours are still due at the pump. Reconciled, and closed.
“Congress can always find a way to keep its own lights on before an election, funny how that works, but the oil deal that was supposed to save you money at the pump turns out to save you nothing. They'll tell you there's no money for gas relief and then fund themselves through midterms without missing a paycheck.”
“The continuing resolution keeps essential government functions running, full stop, that's not self-interested, that's governance — and the oil deal was never marketed as a price-relief measure, it was a diplomatic — okay, it was marketed exactly that way, but expectations were never realistic to begin with.”
The receipts
The House returns from its monthlong August recess on Monday, with Republican leadership looking to usher through a spending bill to fund the government beyond the midterm elections. The lower chamber is also expected to vote on a…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.