U.S. Government Combats High Oil Prices

A couple recent developments in the federal government’s war on high oil prices.
The first is to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Literally. From the April CPI report (emphasis added):

Energy prices were unchanged last month after jumping 1.9% on March, according to Wednesday’s report, though with oil prices hitting record highs this month, that will likely change in May. Gasoline prices fell 2% last month, but natural gas prices spiked 4.8%.

Gasoline prices dropped? To quote John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!” How did prices officially “drop” when in reality they were setting record highs? Through the economic magic of seasonal adjustments. Apparently this April’s price increase is smaller than prior April price increases, or something. If only my wallet size could be seasonally adjusted.
Unfortunately, elected officials have no such magic wand to wave. They must respond to voters and voters are angry about prices. Thus Congress has rushed to do something–anything–to make it look like it can control prices:

Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to challenge President Bush to temporarily halt the daily shipment of thousands of barrels of oil into the government’s emergency reserve.
. . .
Bush has steadfastly refused to halt shipments of about 70,000 barrel barrels of oil a day into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a system of salt caverns on the Gulf coast. The reserve, created to respond to major oil supply disruptions, holds 701 million barrels and is at 97 percent of capacity.
. . .
The Senate voted 97-1 to suspend the shipments for the rest of the year. Hours later, the House followed suit, voting 385-25 to halt the deliveries.

Such a clamor to free up 70,000 barrels/day. If only Congress had had this kind of groundswell to toughen CAFE standards during the past 30 years, we might be seeing some real savings today.
Regarding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I did think it curious that the government has continued to buy oil to fill the reserve even as prices were $20+ more than the government’s own price forecast. Why would it do that?
That only seems to make sense if the Bush administration: (1) anticipates an oil market disruption which will require us to draw on the reserve (Iran?), or (2) the administration simply doesn’t believe its own price projections and expects the price to remain much higher than it is publicly predicting. Either scenario is bad for consumers.