Pelosi To America -- Drop Dead On Drilling

This is an electrically-charged campaign issue, and in recent polls the nation is demanding that Congress address it quickly. USA Today reports today that Nancy Pelosi has said that she will not bring the issue up for a vote. She knows that she will lose because too many of her colleagues are hearing from their constituents, and they support the effort:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday ruled out a vote on new offshore oil drilling even as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he might be open to a compromise that included it.

The scramble over expanded drilling off America's coasts — ammunition for a weekend of rat-a-tat-tat by the presidential campaigns — underscores the political power of $4-a-gallon gas. Though President Bush and other backers of new drilling acknowledge it wouldn't directly affect gas prices for years, they have pounded Democrats for opposing the measure, which is now supported by most Americans.

Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech today in Lansing, Mich., on energy policy, unveiling what spokesman Bill Burton called "new short-term and long-term solutions to the energy crisis that we're facing." ...

The Senate measure, unveiled Friday by five Democrats and five Republicans, would give states the final say in drilling 50 miles or more from shore on the Outer Continental Shelf. It also would repeal a key tax break for oil companies, expand funding for alternative-fuel vehicles and extend tax credits to promote alternative and efficient energy.

Pelosi called proposals to allow more offshore drilling a deceptive "decoy" rather than a solution and indicated she would bar a vote on any bill that included it. "I'm not giving the gavel away to a tactic … that supports the oil (companies), big oil at the cost and the expense of the consumer," she said on ABC's This Week.

The House started a five-week summer recess Friday despite Republican demands for a vote on lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling. House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said GOP representatives would be on the House floor today to protest the lack of action.

Pelosi's hard line is good news for Obama, said Thomas Mann, a congressional analyst at the Brookings Institution. Her action "basically cools the passion of environmentalists, knowing it's not going anywhere, while he (is) open to compromise on a comprehensive package that would achieve many other objectives," Mann said. "It allows him to effectively have it both ways."

Nancy Pelosi is demanding that oil companies use the land they already have leased. The problem is that the majority of those fields are empty now, which is why oil companies want new leases, especially in the OCS where hundreds of billions of barrels of oil are waiting. Add in drilling within the continental United States, and we could quickly end our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

She is also demanding, and is joined by Senator Obama, in calling for the release of 700 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That is basically the entire reserve which was created to avoid an oil shortage. Some Democrats jumped on the bandwagon she proposed, only to see it fall flat as many in the nation that understand this issue continue to point at the instability in the Middle East. To release that amount from the reserves would leave us at the mercy of our enemies abroad.

Nancy Pelosi needs to get this straight: If you do not let the House have a vote on drilling, you will condemn your party to defeat int he fall. I was not being whimsical with pointing out that this is a very charged issue this year. People are fed up with the high price of oil, and the prices at the gas pumps. Americans will make Democrats pay at the polls the way they have been forced to pay at the pumps.

Marcie

ADDENDUM: Contrast her statement to the open letter sent to her by the House GOP leadership. They are back in the House today, and they plan on staying on this issue until the Democrats man-up, and do what is right for the nation:

An Open Letter to Speaker Pelosi

On Friday August 1, 2008, at 11:23 a.m., your Democrat majority in the House of Representatives adjourned the House for five full weeks.

House Republicans believe that Congress should not go on vacation until we take action to lower gas and energy prices for struggling American families.

For the last two months we and our House Republican colleagues have used every tool at our disposal to try and get you and your Democrat majority to vote on legislation to lower gas and energy prices by expanding environmentally sound domestic production of oil and natural gas, improving energy efficiency, and encouraging the development of alternative energy technologies.

Many of the proposals we have asked you and your Democrat majority to allow us to vote on are bipartisan proposals that we believe would enjoy the support of a majority of the Members of the Congress. Yet because you and your Democrat Leadership personally oppose these proposals, you are not allowing them to come up for a vote. This past Sunday, you even told George Stephanopoulos that you will never allow this vote to occur ….

In protest of you and your Democrat majority not allowing an up or down vote on producing more American energy, we and our House Republican colleagues were prepared to take to the floor on Friday, August 1, 2008, and speak to the nation. Rather than allowing that to happen you and your Democrat majority adjourned the House, turned off the television cameras, shut off the microphones and turned out the lights. Nearly 50 House Republicans remained on the floor of the House in defiance speaking to those citizens gathered in the galleries and to the media.

Today we have again returned to the Capitol to continue speaking to the thousands of Americans from all across our country who are visiting the Capitol. We would have preferred if instead we were joined by our colleagues to have a true debate on this issue that ended in an up or down vote.

We think it is unconscionable that Congress has gone on vacation before we have addressed the high gas prices that are crippling our economy and hurting millions of families. We are asking that you reconvene the House from your five-week vacation and schedule a vote on legislation to increase American energy production. Let us be clear, we are not asking for a guaranteed outcome, just the chance to vote.

Good letter, but the chances of her budging on this are slim and none. But their efforts should not be downplayed. They are doing their job while Ms. Pelosi and her House colleagues are languishing at home.

For those who would like to keep tabs on the GOP's efforts today, House Minority Leader, John Boehner, has a live-blog going. Check back often for his updates.

Marcie