U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C.  20510

Dear Senator,             

On April 26, 2013, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 527, the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act.  Ironically, although this bill purported to help taxpayers by privatizing the Federal Helium Reserve (Reserve), the provisions of the bill would be more expensive to implement than simply leaving current law unchanged.  Tomorrow, the Senate will markup its proposal to reform federal helium policy, S. 783, the Helium Stewardship Act.  On behalf of the more than one million members and supporters of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), I urge you to support the Senate bill as a better alternative to the House bill.

H.R. 527 would amend the Helium Act to prevent the closure of the Reserve, in order to fully expend all remaining helium, and to privatize the Reserve by implementing a competitive market-based cost structure.  While CCAGW has long supported privatizing the Reserve, the changes proposed in H.R. 527 would institute immediate auctions that would violate existing contracts between private companies and the Bureau of Land Management.  Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that H.R. 527 would generate less government revenue than the current program.

S. 783 would attempt to mitigate a helium shortage by enabling the Secretary of the Interior to continue to sell crude helium from the Reserve and would not begin an auction process until fiscal year 2015.  While S. 783 could be further improved to maximize the benefit to taxpayers, it is preferable to the House’s misguided efforts.

There is bipartisan agreement that the current policies governing the Federal Helium Reserve should be modified; however, it does not make sense to do so in a way that will result in a greater cost to taxpayers than the status quo.  I urge you to support a responsible winding down of the Federal Helium Reserve.  All votes on S. 783 will be among those considered in CCAGW’s 2013 Congressional Ratings.

Sincerely,

Tom Schatz