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Comment by AIexander | Hacker News Reader

The sale was required by law due to the the Helium Privatization Act of 1996, signed by Clinton. Amended in 2013 by the Helium Stewardship act which allowed it to be sold in an auction with funds credited to the Helium Protection Fund, signed by Obama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...

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1996 - Introduced by Republicans. Passed by unanimous consent in the House and Senate. [0]

2013 - Introduced by Republicans. Passed with 2 nay votes in the Senate, 1 in the House. [1]

Both parties allowed it to happen. In both cases it was veto-proof. Pointless to call out a president. Pointless to blame one party or the other. Both have overwhelming support for this.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...

1: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...

This over simplifies politics.

If Trump made a gigantic fuss about something that seems inconsequential, there would be more than 2 nay votes.

The Epstein files are the counter example of this.

The position in the United States to make sure people vote aligned is called Whip.

Given the makeup of Congress, and even myself as a chem engineer, I could see this as something easy to pass.

Sometimes I think we need more involvement from the deep state and less from people with nice looking hair.

Everything about politics has to have enough footnote and caveats to make people's eyes bleed... but boiling an act down to a single person is not appropriate unless they were the champion of it, or it's intended as a placeholder for the party.

It sounded odd to me that Clinton/Obama would champion this... It felt very free-market / Republican thing to do, especially with it being called the "Privatization Act"... So I looked for more info.

Sure enough, it was introduced by Republicans... But Democrats share full blame on this if you think it's wrong... and the measure passed by so much it's almost pointless to call out the president because -- as you noted -- if the president fought it, there probably wouldn't be unanimous consent followed by 98% approval on amendment. So again: Why call out the presidents and not the party numbers except to inflame?

If anything it was giving credit to the 2013 amendment. It's funny that you're debating my relatively innocuous post when there are a number of clearly inaccurate/irrelevant politically motivated posts in this same thread.

I believe you're mireading my statements.

I am not meaning / attempting to attack you. I was curious about why two Democrat presidents were being called out on something that seemed like a republican-themed billk. Upon investigation, I saw they signed it -- yes, as you said -- but also even if they didn't sign it, or vetoed it, it would still have passed with 98 to 100% on congressional approval.

I felt this was an important fact, in our highly political time, to point out this was one of those bipartisan bills that made it through.

I could additionally add that the house and senate were Republican controlled during the initial act, so the fact it got to Clinton during split-branch control is additionally proof of the bipartisan nature... But I was attempting to be beef and fa tual, and the given information I felt was sufficient to convey this was bipartisan.

I would have preferred more facts with your initial comment. It would have saved me some research time... Since I did the extra work, I decided to share it to save someone else that effort.

Relatively innocuous? Let's call it intentionally misleading, since it looks like you created your account just to make the comment.

> This over simplifies politics.

No, it doesn't. "Passed by Clinton" and "Passed by Obama" are the statements that oversimplify politics.

> The position in the United States to make sure people vote aligned is called Whip.

That is also a gross oversimplification of our politics.

Keep in mind you're responding to someone called "myphpgothacked" whose accounted was created 11 hours ago.

Be wary of these.

It might not even be a "someone".

We don't have to speculate; we know the republicans' positions on privitization and selling of assets during this period.

> Pointless to call out a president.

I understand this to mean, which administration was ruling at the time, rather than that the president would be personally responsible.

> The 104th Congress passed the Act of Congress presenting the legislation to the United States President on September 30, 1996. President Bill Clinton enacted the federal statute into law on October 9, 1996.

> Both chambers had Republican majorities for the first time since the 83rd Congress in 1953.

People immediately trying to point fingers, it's all so tiresome. Ultimately Clinton could have vetoed but this was likely a bipartisan supported bill. Both sides of the government were generally for balancing the budget and winding down some of the excess spending and planning that went into the Cold War era mentality. The late 90s was the only time in my lifetime, I believe, that the deficit shrank. But of course, Your Team Was Responsible For All the Good Things and The Other Team Was Responsible For All the Bad Things from that era.

A lot of optimism and I think they got it right. We're now arming even more and lamenting the loss of all this expensive cold war stuff that was getting rolled out (Virginia class subs?).

We had an unprecedented run of prosperity and American dominance in so many sectors.

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