GOP demands ban to fix record diesel prices its war produced, splits over granting it

…(cont) Here is where the ledger stops balancing. The same proposal Grassley and the other farm-state Republicans filed as the fix is the one The Hill reports has Senate Republicans clashing over it — the caucus that controls the chamber cannot get itself to agree on the remedy for a price its own administration's war produced. Grist ran the number on the other side of that argument: the United States ships millions of barrels of diesel overseas every day, even as American truckers and farmers pay record prices for what is left. That is not a shortage. That is an export contract, and somebody on the far end of it is getting paid in dollars while the truck idling at the depot is paying in gallons.

So the accounting comes down to this. The price went up in September because of a war the administration chose to fight. The fix for that price arrived in September too, filed by the president's own party. And the vote count needed to pass that fix does not exist, because the same party that carried the war and wrote the ask cannot agree among itself on the remedy. Whoever is still loading that diesel onto tankers at record prices is not waiting on the Senate to sort itself out. They already know which column they are in, and it is not the one the trucker is in.