Congress Reaches Agreement ... On Helium

Despite the wrangling that's resulted in a government shut-down, Congress managed last week to agree on one thing: Helium. Reader gbrumfiel writes: "The U.S. holds vast helium reserves which it sells to scientists and private industry. According to NPR, a new law was needed to allow the helium to continue to flow. Congress passed it late last week, but only after a year-long lobbying effort and intense debate (and in the end, Senator Ted Cruz opposed the measure). Can a new bipartisanship rise out of this cooperation? Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? (Insert your helium joke here.)" Apparently, helium is not yet so scarce that it's not available in balloons at the grocery store.

Comments

Re:Thank god we have Ted Cruz

[Bill_the_Engineer]

So he voted against a bill that earmarked the funds in favor for a version that uses the funds for "deficit reduction" which is political speak for money into my pork project. Funding is fungible and no one knows how to use smoke and mirrors to hide budgeting irregularities like a congress person.

At least he didn't waste anyone's time by filibustering it and then voting for it immediately afterwards.

Re:Dispensing our reserves?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Does every competing hospital in my region need to run its own MRI machine

The reality is as long as America wants a for-profit health-care system, and each hospital is an independent entity, you're never going to fix this.

There is no room in the US for efficiencies in the system, because the system is being ran as a bunch of separate businesses. Nobody is going to stop running their very profitable MRI machine to conserve helium or for any other reason unless there's a benefit to them.

In the parts of the world which have a single-payer public system, they mostly shake their heads over the US and their attitude to this.

Your system is set up so that whoever can pay the most can get treated first, and the rest are welcome to suffer and go without.

For a 'civilized' country, America is shockingly indifferent to the fate of the rest of the populace. Which means any time the US does something altruistic, you have to assume there's a financial angle you're not seeing.

When it counts, you can always count on congress to come together, and do the wrong thing.

America has elevated being a selfish bastard to a religion. Which is what this is about is one group loudly saying "we should be completely selfish bastards and fuck the rest of the country".

Which in some circles makes your Republicans essentially terrorists because they're goal is to more or less undermine society and let the rest burn. In their mind, as long as the rich stay rich and government is small, the rest of the consequences are irrelevant.

So as long as your politicians idealize profits at any expense, and not giving a shit about people, this is what you'll get. And, quite frankly, what you deserve.

Re:Thank god we have Ted Cruz

[rujholla]

Funny. I feel that environmental issues is political speak for putting money into pork projects like Solyndra.

Re:Balloons

[DeathToBill]

It can be mixed with something else. Water isn't chemically degraded when it's mixed into sewage, either, but you don't go drinking it. You need to separate it first - or just drink other water that's already pure, since it's cheaper to do that than to purify sewage. This is exactly what is happening in the helium market.