Ted is one tough cookie. This will be interesting!
news-miner.com
ANWR battle rages in Senate
By SAM BISHOP News-Miner Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON--House of Representatives approval of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was less than five hours old Monday morning when senators took up the debate, but they aren't expected to vote on the issue until Wednesday.
The House passed the annual defense appropriations bill with ANWR drilling language attached at 5 a.m. Monday by a vote of 308-106, although the real test--an earlier vote on waiving procedural objections--was much closer, passing 214-201.
When the Senate opened its floor session at 9:30 a.m., Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., asked how his colleagues could even consider approving the same bill.
The conference committee that merged the House and Senate versions Sunday clearly violated a Senate rule by adding the ANWR rider, he said.
"Conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either house," the Senate's Rule 28 states. The ANWR language was in neither the House nor Senate version of the defense spending bill for the current fiscal year.
The conference committee's addition of ANWR will thus make the entire bill subject to challenge by any senator. The challenge, called a point of order, will certainly be upheld by the Senate parliamentarian and, ultimately, the Senate's presiding officer, Feingold said.
A successful point of order would block the bill's passage. To avoid that result, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and other pro-drilling senators are expected to try to reject the parliamentarian's ruling, a move that would mock the Senate's own rules, Feingold said.
Stevens agreed that the Senate rule prohibits the addition of the ANWR language. However, he said, other rules also allow senators the flexibility to temporarily waive the restriction by rejecting the parliamentarian's decision.
"It's not destroying the rule. It's a disagreement," Stevens said. "We shouldn't have people saying we're breaking the rules."
Why then, Feingold asked, did Stevens also insert language that would reinstate the plain interpretation of Rule 28 upon the bill's passage. If Stevens is not destroying the rule, then such language should not be necessary, he said.
Stevens said he is just following past procedure. The language reinstating the rule ensures that the parliamentarian does not view the rejection of the specific point of order as a precedent that undermines the enforceability of the general rule in the future, Stevens said.
He noted that Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic minority leader, helped overrule the parliamentarian and pass similar language protecting the rule's continued enforceability on another bill several years ago.
Reid said Stevens was playing "intellectual games" to justify his attempt to trample the rule.
"This has never been done before," Reid said. His earlier action to which Stevens referred was taken on a "bipartisan basis," he said.
Stevens himself, though, may need a little bipartisan help to overcome the rule. He has said he'll need at least a majority of senators, maybe more, to defeat the parliamentarian's decision.
In a vote on ANWR last month, 51 of 100 senators approved ANWR drilling. The vote on the point of order will test whether the same block will view ANWR development as worthy of a rule waiver.
Stevens said the rule has been ignored many times. In fact, it will need to be ignored this week if senators want to save other provisions added in conference to the defense bill, such as funding for avian flu preparation.
The conference bill also proposes to create a Gulf of Mexico recovery fund and send a stream of federal ANWR leasing and royalty money to it. Another 5 percent of the federal ANWR revenue would pay for low-income heating assistance.
Another section of the bill would send money earned from the coming auction of federal radio spectrum to a variety of security, disaster and conservation efforts.
All these additions were "beyond the scope of the original appropriation" bills, Stevens said. "No question. We added it."
They're good and urgent causes, though, he said, and ANWR drilling fits the same definition. The decline in domestic oil production must be reversed, he said, and this is the year to do it because both the House and Senate have voted this year for ANWR drilling on other bills, even though the provision had to be removed from those bills to ensure their passage.
At Sunday's conference committee meeting, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said Stevens was "sprinkling" the radio spectrum money around the country to lure senators into voting for ANWR drilling.
"You're trying to make them an offer they can't refuse," Obey said. "Isn't that really what the game is here?"
"That's not the point," Stevens said. "It's a means of assuring there is continued funding of money for disasters."
Stevens invoked the 1964 Alaska earthquake: "I remember how we were treated, and I remember how long it took us to get assistance. So I'm committed to this and I've been working with these people ever since (the hurricane). So if you want to belittle it, you go ahead and belittle it."
"I'm glad to see that you're being driven on this issue by your concern for the Gulf," Obey retorted.
Senators on the conference committee backed drilling 11-8, with several voting by proxy. House members voted 12-6 in favor of drilling.
While much of the debate Monday focused on the expected point of order against the ANWR language, there remains a second way Democrats could stop the bill: a filibuster.
Several vowed Monday in a news conference to use that tool if necessary.
Stevens needs 60 votes to stop them. He hasn't found that many pro-drilling senators in recent years, but neither has the ANWR provision been placed on "must-pass" legislation such as a defense spending bill.
"I don't think he would have done what he is going to do if he didn't have the votes," said Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, in a meeting with reporters Monday afternoon. "Sen. Stevens is pretty good at this business and I would say the chances are very good that he would be successful. Again, I don't operate in that body. I'm just pleased we passed it out of the House again."
Senate Democrats, in their news conference, said Stevens is endangering timely passage of the defense spending bill.
"Sen. Stevens says he's not holding up the process, but he is," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. "He knows very well that we could all go home today. We could pass these outstanding pieces of legislation regarding defense and other things and be gone. But he wants to stay here. If he wants to stay here, then we'll stay here to fight."
Sen. Bill Frist, the Senate Republican leader, filed a motion Monday evening that proposes to limit debate time and thus block the filibuster. A vote on that motion, which requires the 60 votes to pass, could come very early Wednesday morning unless senators agree to take it up sooner.
Bills created by a conference committee can't be amended on the House or Senate floor because, by their nature, they represent the final effort to resolve differences between the bodies.
So if ANWR drilling opponents succeed in stopping the defense bill in the Senate, it would raise a question of how and when Congress will pay for the military this federal fiscal year, which is already almost three months old.
Stevens has said that shouldn't be much of a challenge.
"If we lose, then we'll reconstitute the conference and ANWR will be out," he said Saturday.
The conference committee was automatically disbanded when the House passed the bill Monday morning. Any changes made by a new conference committee would have to secure full Senate and House approval.
But House members are leaving town. While the House hasn't formally adjourned, the leadership doesn't expect to bring members back this year to consider any more legislation, Young said.
Young said he didn't know when a final defense bill might be passed if Senate Democrats stop it this week. |
