This is an odd way of phrasing this. Not just because the bill was passed in 96, not 95; but it was signed by a dem president, passed unanimously in the Senate and via voice vote in the House.
So it’s not so much that “Republicans” forced it as there was a US law passed. There was no contention by political lines and it seemed all political parties supported the law.
The action was no more “forced by Republicans” than the 2013 act that “sort of fixed” [0]. (Also passed unanimously and signed by a dem president)
There’s plenty of politically contentious stuff in the world so that we don’t need to present history in inaccurate terms.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527
Imagine the counterfactual where the Helium Act of 1925 was not passed and the Hindenburg was using helium instead of highly flammable hydrogen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Act_of_1925
Hindenburg designer Hugo Eckener sought to use helium, a non-flammable lifting gas. However, the United States, which had a monopoly on the world supply of helium and feared that other countries might use the gas for military purposes, banned its export, and the Hindenburg was reengineered. After the Hindenburg disaster, American public opinion favored the export of helium to Germany for its next great zeppelin, the LZ 130, and the law was amended to allow helium export for nonmilitary use. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, however, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes refused to ink the final contract.
https://www.history.com/news/the-hindenburg-disaster-9-surpr...
It was, until Republicans forced the depletion by sale of the US helium stockpile in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...
The result was a market crash (because the stuff was sold for less than market value), it was only sort of fixed in 2013... which then led to a shortage in 2019 that got so massive it impacted science, which in turn only got resolved by corona killing off the demand for balloon helium and massively reducing the demand of industry (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2020060...).