Will someone remind me again, why we do we need republicans?
House drops ANWR from budget
DRILLING: More than 20 Republicans say they won't vote for a bill with that provision.
By LIZ RUSKIN
Anchorage Daily News
Published: November 10, 2005
Last Modified: November 10, 2005 at 05:20 AM
WASHINGTON -- House Republicans, after long hours of scrounging for the votes to pass their five-year budget, decided Wednesday night to drop a provision that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
The news emerged late Wednesday night as the House Rules Committee prepared the far-reaching bill for a vote on the House floor today.
"There will be no drilling in ANWR," said New Hampshire Rep. Charles Bass, one of the Republican moderates who led the effort to strip ANWR from the bill.
But environmentalists and drilling advocates alike said their decades-long fight goes on. Because ANWR development was in the budget bill the Senate passed last week, it's still possible for it to become law.
"I think our biggest hurdle over the last many years has been the Senate, and we're over that hurdle," said Tara Sweeney, who represents the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. in Washington. "It's just important for us to focus on what's ahead."
If the House were to pass its budget package today, members of the House and Senate would be appointed to hash out the differences between the two bills. The final version would have to go before the House and Senate for a vote.
"It's good that they removed this," said Brian Moore of the Alaska Wilderness League. Late Wednesday, he wasn't sure how big a victory this was for his side. "Hopefully, there are assurances that (ANWR) is removed all the way through this process."
More than 20 Republicans have told the House leadership they would not vote for the budget without a promise that ANWR won't be added into the final House-Senate compromise, The Washington Post reported.
It would take 14 of them voting no to kill the bill, assuming the Democrats are united in rejecting it. So far the Democrats have remained opposed.
ANWR is one of many controversies in the House budget, which aims to save $50 billion over five years by slicing Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement, among the most-argued reductions.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said it's incorrect to call these cuts. They are small reductions in the growth of government programs, he told the House Rules Committee on Wednesday night.
Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., objected to Nussle's semantics. He said the Republican budget would cut services for poor people at a time when need is growing. About 300,000 people would lose eligibility for food stamps, he said.
"To say that these aren't cuts is to imply that somehow ... real people aren't going to get hurt," he said. "Well, if this budget moves forward as its currently written, real people will get hurt."
Nussle said the Democrats are doing nothing to improve the situation.
"Where's your plan?" he demanded. "Where's your plan for the people who need this help?"
Earlier in the day, a pro-drilling group of Western lawmakers told reporters that they were considering whether they could vote for the bill without an ANWR provision.
Environmentalists have been arguing that ANWR's oil would lower gas prices by only a penny a gallon, extrapolating from government statistics.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said the increased oil supply from ANWR, or even the anticipation of that increase, could lower gas prices significantly. He cited the recent price downturn as evidence.
"It doesn't take much difference in supply to make a big difference in price," he said.
Sweeney, from Barrow, said opening the refuge is a matter of self-determination for her people. ASRC, the regional Native corporation, owns 92,000 acres in ANWR that can't be drilled unless Congress takes action on the refuge
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