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Good heavens: is the GOP actually *listening* to us when it comes to energy policy?

I do believe that it may well be doing just that.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  September 17th, 2008 at 10:34 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

What a refreshing change. Ignore the title – as Martin Knight notes in comments here, the WSJ editorial board [I have had it pointed out to me that I meant the "news room:" oops, I did, and my bad] is usually in the tank for the Democrats – in favor of the meat of the article:

The House late Tuesday passed by a 236-189 vote a bill backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) that would allow drilling in waters 50 miles from the shore along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts as long as coastal states agree — and beyond 100 miles regardless of what states want. The proposal represents a concession by Rep. Pelosi to the political success of Republican calls for more drilling.

But in contrast to proposals backed by Republicans and some moderate Senate Democrats, the bill approved in the House Tuesday wouldn’t share any royalties gained from increased offshore oil drilling with coastal states.

Depriving states of a share of royalty revenue would eliminate a critical incentive for them to allow drilling off their coasts, Republicans say.

The White House announced late Tuesday that Mr. Bush’s senior advisors would recommend he veto the House measure, should it reach his desk. The White House cited the royalty issue among its objections.

The Senate appears unlikely to pass a drilling proposal, based on interviews with lawmakers in recent days.

Bolding mine, and via AoSHQ. This is tea-leaf reading, of course: but there’s some evidence here that the House bill as currently established is not going to be acceptable to the GOP members of the Gang of Whatever The Number Is Today. Even if there is, there certainly isn’t enough support in the House to overrule a veto – and what’s one more load of rocks to throw on this President’s chest? In other words, I’m predicting either one of those patented 5X-4X cloture votes, or else a Presidential nixing; either way, the Democrats will scream, point fingers, and snarl for the cameras… then cave on offshore drilling, because the clock is running and the October deadline looms.

Guess that they should have settled this before the August break, huh?

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COMMENTS

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  • simpson316

    as long as we can keep our minority from getting too small this November we should be able to block more stupid bills like this.

    I’m thinking that the NRCC deserves a cookie for their efforts.

  • aaronbg

    My understanding is if nothing passes the moratorium will be lifted. That is all well and good but will we actually be that much better off? I mean the enviro whackos will still sue to hold up drilling in ANWR and OCS. We really need a bill passed limiting the litigation on behalf of the enviro nuts. Otherwise isn’t this all for naught?

    Seriously, what is the next step in the fight and how can we be advocates for it. What message do we need to be sending.

  • ColbyS

    Am I wrong or does the territory ‘Atlantic and Pacific’ coastlines exclude the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean?

    Maybe I’m wrong and we’re still talking about Alaska and the Gulf here. In that case, the fiscal conservative in me kind of likes the idea of not giving shared royalties to the state governments. These are mostly rock solid Red States anyway, I am doubtful that they would impede drilling at the state level in TX, AK, LA and so on. Perhaps I am wrong.

  • Achance

    Under the Statehood Act Alaska is entitled to 90% of the revenue from offshore oil. The US has never kept a single deal it has ever made with Alaska, so I’m thinking we might be just a bit obstreperous about it.

    We’d be especially obstreperous about the Chukchi Sea off Northwest Alaska. We have very little infrastructure out there and the impact would be like the original Prudhoe Bay development. We’d get to pay for all the infrastructure and deal with all the impacts, and I don’t think we’d be very amenable to letting the Fed have all the money.

  • ColbyS

    You’re saying that this is coming OUT of the Fed’s share and going INTO the states’ shares? In that case I am in line with everybody else then. I thought this was creating a state royalty in ADDITION to the full Federal one.

  • Southernwoman

    This could be called treason against our country, knowing everything we live with and use takes oil. From our medicines, plastics, makeup, and Vaseline there are too many to list we use every part of the barrel of oil. This bill is horrible, why can?t we just drill everywhere? We are an oil rich nation we can take care of our self if we are allowed to. We drive car?s that take gas that comes from oil, not fake gas from corn that take our food and cost moreto make than gas.
    We can give thanks to Nancy and Harry, Bevies and Butt-head of our government. This could be called treason against the country when 70% of people want to drill everywhere, now and want their oil here but the democratic part of the government that is holding up the progress thanks to there want’s or they?re restrictions– that?s treason

  • gamecock

    will be primarily fueled by oil for the foreseeable future

  • Badill_T

    There’s been a lot of effort expended on behalf of increased domestic drilling, but I found out that it won’t seriously impact the price! Everywhere I look its the same thing: at best the price will drop by a few pennies over several years. Why do we care so much then?

  • The_Gadfly

    I’d suggest with using whatever indexing system is available at your local university or college library to look up articles about the price of oil and oil production circa 1980-1984.

    Some of us are old enough to have seen this play before, and we know how it turns out when you let the markets work.