Senate passes bill to prevent US from selling oil reserves to China.

Vote comes one year after Free Beacon report showed Biden sold one million⁢ reserve ​barrels to China

The Senate on Thursday passed with⁤ bipartisan support a measure that bars the United States from selling its oil reserves to China, a move that comes one year after a Washington Free ​Beacon report showed ⁤the Biden administration sold nearly one million reserve ‍barrels to a Chinese oil giant.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) ⁤and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) introduced the policy as an amendment‌ to the National Defense Authorization Act. The measure​ received wide bipartisan backing—just 14 Democrats voted no, ‌compared with‌ 37 who joined‍ their ⁢Republican colleagues in support of the ban. The amendment as‍ a result passed 85-14, easily clearing the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

The‌ amendment’s passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate comes as a⁤ rebuke ‌to President⁣ Joe Biden, ⁤whose ⁤administration vehemently defended its sale ⁤of 950,000 Strategic⁢ Petroleum Reserve barrels ‌to the trading arm of ‍the China Petrochemical Corporation. ‌White​ House spokesman Ian Sams, for example, accused the sale’s Republican critics of “lying” and “pushing false conspiracies about the president,” an argument that did not stop a large ⁢majority of⁤ Senate Democrats from supporting a ban.

The amendment’s‌ inclusion‍ in⁣ the National Defense ‌Authorization Act—which authorizes funding for the Department of Defense—will likely create a political headache ​for Biden. The president has already voiced displeasure with tough-on-China ⁢provisions included in the act. One would force the Pentagon to ​disclose information on foreign ​nationals who work on military research, ​while another would order the secretary of defense to determine whether the Chinese government has aided in the transportation of fentanyl precursors to Mexican drug cartels.

Still, a‍ Biden veto of the act would create ‌immense controversy. The ​defense​ policy legislation has become law each year ⁤for the last 62 ​years.

The House in January passed identical legislation to bar China ​from purchasing U.S. reserve oil. That bill also received bipartisan support, with 113 of the 210 Democrats who voted supporting it. Cruz hammered Biden for selling ⁢reserve barrels to China, saying in a ⁤ statement last week that he is “proud to lead the bipartisan effort to stop‌ this from‍ happening⁢ in⁢ the future.”

“The original intent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was to ensure that ‍America had sufficient ⁢oil reserves in the event of an emergency,”‌ Cruz said. “We are unnecessarily and dangerously undermining our national security in any ​instance that we sell any part of this stockpile to the Chinese Communist Party or ‌any company under its control.”

While Manchin joined Cruz to introduce the amendment,⁤ the‌ Democrat opposed a similar measure ​in the past. Manchin ‌in 2022 shot down a Cruz amendment to the ‍so-called Inflation⁢ Reduction ‍Act that would have limited U.S. oil⁢ reserves from going to “a bidder that intends to export the crude oil to the People’s Republic of China.”