Six Republican Senators Turn Against Bush on ANWR

Reuters ^ | 1/31/03

[areafiftyone]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling suffered a major blow on Friday, as six Republican senators said they opposed inserting language to give oil companies access to the refuge into a must-pass budget bill.

ANWR, which is home to polar bears, caribou and other wildlife, sprawls across 19 million acres of Alaska's northeast corner.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed energy legislation last year that would have opened ANWR to drilling.

The White House contends that the refuge's potential 16 billion barrels of crude must be tapped to help reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports from unfriendly countries like Iraq.

Drilling is opposed by many Democrats and environmental groups, who say the administration should cut oil imports by boosting the mileage standards of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles.

Six of the Senate's 51 Republicans, including former presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona, on Friday announced they would not go along with a plan to tack ANWR drilling language onto a massive spending bill this spring that would enact the new 2004 budget for the federal government.

The senators said drilling in the Alaskan refuge is an important policy issue that should be openly debated, not slipped into an unrelated bill.

"Because the opening of the Arctic refuge to drilling raises a host of policy concerns, including serious environmental ramifications, we do not believe this issue should be injected in the budget process," the lawmakers said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles.

The letter is the latest twist in a two-year legislative battle over drilling in the Alaskan refuge.

The Democratic-led Senate last year soundly defeated efforts to open the refuge, when drilling supporters fell short of the 60 votes needed to end debate on the controversial proposal and allow a final vote on the measure.

To get around a filibuster this time around, supporters of opening the refuge want to attach drilling language to must-pass legislation to fund the 2004 budget for the federal government. They argue that such language is appropriate for budget legislation because of the fees the government would collect from leasing tracts in the refuge to oil companies.

Under Senate rules, budget legislation cannot be filibustered and only 50 votes would be needed to approve the bill and an attached ANWR drilling provision.

In addition to McCain, the letter was signed by Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois and Mike DeWine of Ohio.

In his State of the Union speech to Congress earlier this week, President Bush urged lawmakers to pass legislation enacting his national energy plan, which includes drilling in the refuge.

Two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, oppose ANWR drilling and have promised to filibuster any energy bill that would open the refuge.

[CollegeRepublican]

That estimate was taking the USA's total daily crude oil consumption in 2001 and the supposed 16 billion barrel of crude in the ANWR deposit and dividing. We obviously can not drill the oil out of there fast enough, nor do we want to. It was just an illustration of the amount of oil in ANWR. About 27 months worth of oil for the USA.

I work for the DOE so I play with these numbers alot.

[Kip Lange]

PLUS...it's the same people saying that this is a WAR FOR OIL who do't want us to drill for oil in our OWN COUNTRY!!! BEAM ME UP!!!

Liberals live in a self-contradictory state. I believe Kierkeegard referred to them as the "Knights of Eternal Stupidity". *whistle*

--CWL

[stalin]

To say that going against your party is conformist is inaccurate at least.

Some of them do have other adjendas besides trying to do the right thing but sometimes doing the right thing means voting against your party. When that is the motivation it is free thinking and patriotic whichever party that comes from.

Drilling anwar now is not a good idea. I'm glad that they blocked it even if their motivations aren't pure.

[Ann Archy]

Fox has Nothing on Bush....Americans don't want the jobs that the hard-working Mexicans are doing. The borders are TOO open, but not because Fox has something on Bush...

[gaspar]

Where in the living hell did you get your consumption figures? Back to school, friend.

[stalin]

If the middle east is a glowing ball of radioactive muslims we can hire Mexicans and Filipinos to go in there in radiation suits and drill for us. There would be even less need to drill anwar.

[Investment Biker]

Both DeWine and Voinovich are going off the reservation with Lincoln Chafee and McCain. should be: Both DeWuss and Rinovich are going off the reservation with Lincoln Chafee and McCain.

[cajun-jack]

maybe it won't have an immediate effect on gas prices, but a helluva lot of Americans and American Companies will have jobs that will help them, their families and the economy.

[Kip Lange]

To say that going against your party is conformist is inaccurate at least.

To say that John McCain and Olympia Snowe are "free-thinkers" or are going against the party out of some ACTUAL personal belief is stupidity (at least).

1. Agendas, not "adjendas", and it's also ANWR, not "anwar" (what's the extra A stand for? heh).
2. If you're honestly going against your party on a particular reason out of consience, yes, that's free-thinking, but these monkeys are about the furthest things from free-thinkers you can get. Their voting records are more predictable than a pure party-liner's.
3. "Drilling anwar now is not a good idea. I'm glad that they blocked it even if their motivations aren't pure. " -- and thus you've tipped your hand.
I refute it *thus* (*kicks stone*).

--CWL

[lysie]

ANWR ping!!

[Kip Lange]

If the middle east is a glowing ball of radioactive muslims we can hire Mexicans and Filipinos to go in there in radiation suits and drill for us. There would be even less need to drill anwar.

You wouldn't be a troll or a ZOT, would you?

--CWL

[cynicom]

Tell me once again why we should vote for anyone for senate that is republican?????

[CollegeRepublican]

Where in the living hell did you get your consumption figures? Back to school, friend.

Table 1.4 World Petroleum Consumption, 1960-2001. U.S Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2001, Washington, DC, July 2002, Table 11.9 and updates from the International Petroleum Monthly, July 2002.

That is where I got my information from.

[Kip Lange]

Supreme Court nominations go through more easily. That's about it. ;-)

--CWL

[stalin]

An intelligent free thinking person that is not a brainwashed ideologue does not vote party lines all of the time. Sometimes political parties is wrong for numerous reasons. The best and the brightest as well as the not so bright but with backbone and moral courage will often vote against their party.

It is easy to tell who are the most corrupt. They are the ones that vote strait party line every time regardless. They want the chairmanships and the soft money more than anything else. What is the best thing to do is of little consideration to those people.

I agree that the Founding Fathers would be turning over in their graves. The last think that most of them wanted was governance by polling numbers and bribery. I think that many of them didn't expect much better though.

[CollegeRepublican]

19.65 billion barrels per day.

Billion should be million. But the calculation is still correct.

[alaskanfan]

You are correct!!!!

We shouldn't develop ANY of our own natural resources. We should send all of these jobs overseas with the money that goes along with them. Our nation needs to become a nation of service sector jobs occupied by the undocumented aliens, that we refuse to stop from crossing our borders, welfare recipients and government workers.</ rant >

[CollegeRepublican]

See #98