The Senate engaged in an even more protracted struggle this
month over how to calculate oil royalties, a hot-button
issue for environmentalists. Administration officials argue
that the industry deliberately has underpaid the federal
government by $66 million a year by inaccurately estimating
the value of the oil it extracts from federal lands. But
lawmakers from oil states have blocked new rules basing
royalties on the market price of oil by including
prohibitions in three spending bills over the past 18
months.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) waged a filibuster on the
issue, and it took Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) two
weeks to muster enough votes to reinsert language halting
the royalty changes. Hutchison, calling it "one of the
hardest fights I've ever had," said she and her allies were
merely asserting their institutional prerogatives.

"I think it's important to take a stand that Congress
should make tax policy, not federal agencies," she (Kay) said.

Boxer described the oil industry's current stance as "an
intentional defrauding of the United States taxpayer."