Just drill baby !
Posted on 03/10/2005 1:43:46 PM PST by John Lenin
By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Democrats trying to head off the opening of an Alaskan wildlife refuge for oil exploration lost the year's first skirmish Thursday as the Senate Budget Committee voted to clear the way for drilling.
By a 12-10 vote, the Republican-led panel voted to forbid Senate filibusters against legislation later this year allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Filibusters, a procedural delay, require the votes of 60 of the 100 senators to end — a margin that drilling supporters would probably find difficult to achieve.
The vote kept intact language in the $2.56 trillion budget granting the procedural protection to the opening of the reserve, which has pitted economic and environmental interests against each other. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who led the effort to strip the provision, said putting it in the budget was "a backdoor maneuver."
But Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., said claims of potential environmental damage go "far beyond reality" and said the reserve would create jobs.
The fight came as Republicans pushed their 2006 spending plan toward committee passage. Like President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget and a similar plan the House Budget Committee approved Wednesday, the Senate fiscal outline would shrink record federal deficits over the next five years by trimming domestic spending while cutting taxes and buttressing defense and anti-terrorism efforts.
At both panel's meetings, Democrats criticized Republicans for budgets they said would hurt the poor, students and others. They said deficits would be worse than the GOP was projecting because their plans were omitting the costs of wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) beyond 2006, easing the alternative minimum tax's effect on middle-income earners, and Bush's goal of reshaping Social Security (news - web sites).
Overall, the Senate plan requires other Senate committees to write bills by June carving $32 billion in savings from Medicare, student loans, farm programs and other benefits over the next five years. Reflecting the House's more conservative tenor, its budget calls for $69 billion in such savings, nearly $20 billion more than Bush proposed.
The Senate budget also orders $70 billion in five-year tax cuts and gives them a procedural shield from filibusters. The House plan gives such protection to $45 billion in tax cuts, but House leaders say they plan to produce the full $106 billion Bush wants in tax cuts.
The full House and Senate plan to vote on their budgets next week. In April they will try to craft a compromise that eluded them last year because of a tax-cut fight that produced a stalemate.
Congress' budget sets overall spending and tax targets while leaving specific revenue and expenditure changes for later bills.
The House budget did not specify where the benefit reductions would come from. But based on the House committees assigned to find the savings, the Medicaid program for the poor and elderly could be targeted for up to $20 billion in five-year cuts — more than double Bush's plan — plus other reductions for student loans, welfare, farmers and veterans.
By law, benefit programs grow automatically to cover inflation and population growth. While overall spending for these programs would grow under the GOP budgets, growth would be slowed through lower benefits, lower payments to providers or smaller numbers of recipients served.
Both budgets would hold domestic programs except benefits to just less than last year, with decisions on specifics to be made later. They would push Pentagon (news - web sites) spending to $419 billion, growth of 4.8 percent, with a smaller increase for anti-terror programs at home.
Following last year's record $412 billion deficit, the House projects a 2006 shortfall of $376 billion and the Senate a $362 billion gap. Both chambers claim to meet Bush's goal of halving the deficit by 2009, though their starting point is Bush's overestimated 2004 shortfall of $521 billion.
The two chambers see deficits dipping close to $200 billion by 2010. That is the last year covered by both plans, just as the baby boom retirement is expected to start driving shortfalls higher again.
Any idea how much (in barrels) is estimated to be in ANWR?
How about today?
Sweet!
ANYDAY sounds good to me...LOL!! I've been running on fumes lately, need to fill up soon!!
Is that true? Because if it is, and it's plausible, it pisses me off.
The Dept of Interior estimates there is 9-16 billion barrels of recoverable oil in ANWR.
I maintain he wouldn't have submitted the same list again this year if he didn't have a play set up with the Frist & the Hammer. (Hey, I like that)
YEah, it's complete bull... if they were sincere about the environment they would want to drill here where there are environmental controls rather than in Venezuela or Yemen where there are none.
"Any idea how much (in barrels) is estimated to be in ANWR?"
Here is some info:
http://www.anwr.org/backgrnd/potent.html
"Recoverable oil estimates ranges from 600 million barrels at the low end to 9.2 billion barrels at the high end. They also reported identifying 26 separate oil and gas prospects in the Coastal Plain that could each contain "super giant" fields (500 million barrels or more). "
I read, that there is at least enough oil, to substitute for the oil we import from Saudi Arabia (25% of our oil need) for 20 years. This alone is worth it. But there could be much more oil.
This http://www.anwr.org/ is a good resource for info about ANWR, from a pro-drill-ANWR viewpoint.
You are correct it is 9-16 billion.
C'mon Dems: 1. The Teamsters (heavily Democratic, I know a few myself) support it 2. The Native Peoples support it (gotta hold on to the votes of "People of Color") and 3. The Caribou breed like crazy around oil pipelines (and I know how much you Dems like "wildlife").
Unfortunately, Feingold was just re-elected last November to a new six year term. He was considered vulnerable, but a three-way bloodbath in the GOP primary in September left their surviving candidate (Michels) somewhat bloodied, and with too much ground to make up.
Hopefully, the GOP will learn from this experience as they gear up for the "winnable" Senate races in 2006 (FL, NE, WA, ND, and MN).
Too bad the GOP can't do this for judicial nominees. Seems an easy enough procedure.
It would provide 1.0 million barrels a day for 30 years. We use 8.0 million barrels a day (about 2.5 million a day from the Middle East where Saudi Arabia represents 1.0 million barrels). ANWR replaces Saudi Arabia. The rest of the 5.5M barrels are from Venezeula, Nigeria, Indonesia and domestic.
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