Senate Republicans have failed to agree on any plan to lower gas and diesel prices before the midterms, leaving working Americans to eat the cost of a fuel crisis worsened by foreign wars and a hurricane bearing down on Gulf production.

Diesel averaged $6.28 a gallon nationwide Thursday, up from $3.68 a year ago, and regular gasoline sat at $4.36, up from $3.12, according to AAA data. Now Hurricane Isaias is shutting down roughly a quarter of Gulf oil production, with Chevron and Shell pulling workers from multiple sites, according to NBC News. About 14% of the nation's refining capacity sits in the storm's path, and there is, as Lipow Oil Associates president Andy Lipow put it, "no slack in the system."

The Republican response has been circular firing squad. Farm-state senators like Chuck Grassley pushed a 90-day halt to diesel exports, telling The Hill in September, "We need to concentrate on affordability for this election." Oil-state Republicans killed it. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer warned a ban would backfire: "If you restrict access to the global market for our diesel production, you literally disincentivize more diesel production in which case you end up with higher prices, lower supply." Texas Sen. John Cornyn called the export ban a "gimmick." Energy Secretary Chris Wright agreed it "definitely doesn't work."

Budget hawks, meanwhile, shot down a federal gas tax suspension. The result: nothing passes, nothing changes, and the bill lands on the same people it always does — truckers, farmers, and commuters.

An Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association spokesperson said members "have been feeling the pain at the pump for months as diesel prices have climbed."

Cramer's alternative — "expand and modernize our domestic refining capacity" and pass "permitting reform so American energy infrastructure can get built without delay" — is the long-term answer everyone in Washington invokes and nobody in Washington delivers. Permitting reform has been a Republican talking point for years. The infrastructure to refine domestic crude still isn't getting built.

NBC News framed the price crisis primarily around foreign disruptions — the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and Ukraine's ongoing strikes on Russian refineries, which GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan said could keep global refining tight for "three to six months." Brent crude surged nearly 5% Thursday on reports that Trump was considering renewed attacks against Iran. The Daily Caller, by contrast, kept the focus on the GOP's internal split and the political threat to Republican Senate seats in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.

What neither outlet dwelled on is the bipartisan root: both parties have presided over decades of permitting gridlock, refinery attrition, and foreign interventions that constrict supply. When Republicans control the chamber, they don't deliver. When Democrats do, they add regulatory weight. The export ban was a gimmick. The permitting-reform promise is a ghost. Trump moved on his own Monday, signing an order letting truckers use tax-free dyed diesel normally reserved for farm equipment on highways. It's a temporary patch for a structural problem.

The question heading into November isn't which Republican faction wins the argument. It's whether either faction is capable of building a system where a country sitting on the world's largest energy reserves doesn't have to beg the global market for diesel.