WASHINGTON - House leaders late Wednesday abandoned an attempt to push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping budget bill Thursday.
They also dropped from the budget document plans to allow states to authorize oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts — regions currently under a drilling moratorium.
The actions were a stunning setback for those who have tried for years to open a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil development, and a victory for environmentalists, who have lobbied hard against the drilling provisions. President Bush has made drilling in the Alaska refuge one of his top energy priorities.
The House Rules Committee formalized the change late Wednesday by issuing the terms of the debate when the House takes up the budget package on Thursday.
The decision to drop the ANWR drilling language came after GOP moderates said they would oppose the budget if it was kept in the bill. The offshore drilling provision was also viewed as too contentious and a threat to the bill, especially in the Senate.
Last week, the Senate included ANWR drilling in its version of the budget, so the matter will have to be thrashed out in negotiations between the Senate and House if the budget is approved by the House.
There's the key right there--GOP moderates said they would oppose the budget if ANWR was in the bill. GOP moderates looked at yesterday's election and realized that if they went along with the right-wingnuts, their own political future would be in jeporady. ANWR has been a political flashpoint, where the GOP-controlled Congress has been under pressure from both Big Oil and the White House for opening ANWR for drilling, while the Democrats have opposed it through filibuster. The GOP has succeeded in pushing ANWR through Congress by both using parliamentary proceduress, and surpressing moderate dissent in the GOP ranks. But yesterday's election has caused a change in the political landscape. The moderates realized that if they allow the right-wingnuts to continue pushing this ANWR measure through, it will be their seats that will be challenged by Democratic candidates in the 2006 elections. And the Democrats will make full use of the issue by showing the Republicans as lackeys for Big Oil. And if these Republican moderates want to keep their seats, they are going to have to shift their legislation more towards the center, and away from the right-wingnuts. And that's what we're seeing here:
The budget bill is immune from filibuster, but drilling proponents suddenly found it hard to get the measure accepted by a majority of the House. That's because Democrats oppose the overall budget bill, giving House GOP opponents of drilling in the Arctic enough leverage to have the matter killed.
Twenty-five Republicans, led by Rep. Charles Bass (news, bio, voting record) of New Hampshire, signed a letter asking GOP leaders to strike the Alaskan drilling provision from the broader $54 billion budget cut bill.
"Rather then reversing decades of protection for this publicly held land, focusing greater attention on renewable energy sources, alternate fuels, and more efficient systems and appliances would yield more net energy savings than could come from ANWR and would have a higher benefit on the nation's long-term economic leadership and security," they said.
The moderates knew they had leverage, given the narrow margin of GOP control of the House. It only takes 14 Republican defections to scuttle a bill, assuming every Democrat opposes it.
Still, removing the Arctic oil drilling provision could incite a backlash from lawmakers who strongly favor it, which is a big majority of Republicans. House and Senate GOP leaders are likely to push hard to get the ANWR proposal back into the bill in negotiations on a final document.
The wingnuts will try whatever they can to keep the ANWR provision in the bill--even if it means putting it back into the conference committee. The question the wing-nuts refuse to ask is, are they willing to gamble the Republican Party's leadership of the government for short-term political gains--considering the American public's backlash against the Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House? Are they still willing to throw themselves off a cliff?
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