No Budge Pelosi ~ 9% Nan Stands Firm Against Offshore Drilling

Pelosi stands firm against offshore drilling
International Herald Tribune
Upon entering Congress in 1987, Representative Nancy Pelosi quickly became part of the solid California front against oil drilling along much of the nation’s coast.
The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the steady push to tap the potential reserves off the state’s rugged coast had galvanized Californians and made opposition to offshore drilling part of the political DNA of up-and-coming figures like Pelosi.
She repeatedly resisted oil drilling in marine sanctuaries off the state’s coast near her San Francisco district and, after joining the Appropriations Committee, was an advocate of reinstating the coastal drilling ban through spending restrictions each year.

“We learned the hard way that oil and water do not mix on our coast,” Pelosi told a key committee in 1996 as she made her case for keeping the ban in place before a Congress then controlled by Republicans.

Now, with gas prices soaring, those drilling restrictions are facing their most severe test in years as calls intensify to more aggressively pursue domestic oil. Yet despite increasing pressure from President George W. Bush, a full-bore assault by congressional Republicans and some anxiety among her own rank-and-file Democrats, Pelosi is not budging.

The president of the United States, with gas at $4 a gallon because of his failed energy policies, is now trying to say that is because I couldn’t drill offshore,” Pelosi said in an interview. “That is not the cause, and I am not going to let him get away with it.”

Her voice carries considerable weight since, as speaker, Pelosi is in a position to prevent a vote on expanded drilling from reaching the floor
And she and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, appear intent on holding the line against calls to approve drilling in areas now off limits. They mount the counterargument that the oil and gas industry is not aggressively exploring large expanses it has already leased on land and offshore. They also have urged Bush to pour some fuel from national reserves into the commercial supply chain in an effort to lower prices.

But Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader who is escorting a delegation to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this weekend, said the Democratic approach was woefully insufficient. He said Pelosi, in insisting on preserving the drilling ban, was putting Democrats in the cross hairs of voters furious about gas prices.

“I think Speaker Pelosi is walking her Blue Dogs and other vulnerable Democrats off a cliff and they know it,” said Boehner, referring to the coalition of Democrats representing more conservative districts.
He accused the speaker of using procedural maneuvers to thwart votes on expanded drilling, a position he said would prevail if the moment arrived. “Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are standing in the way of what the American people want,” Boehner said.
In both the House and Senate, small groups of Democrats have begun meeting informally with Republicans to try to come up with a bipartisan response to soaring oil prices; opening up new areas to drilling is part of the mix. Leaders of the Blue Dog coalition are openly pressing for drilling in the Arctic refuge and elsewhere.
The rest of this article is HERE

Wild Thing’s comment……..
Worst Speaker in the history of the Congress!
If we don’t drill there, someone else will. That gives (1) another country assets that could be ours, which (2) gives another country jobs which we would have otherwise had, and (3) we might end up buying the oil from that country.
If all the offshore oil drilling was added up, all the places in the entire world and then add up how many times there has been a spill or a problem. Good grief the good would weigh outnumber the bad things that have happened.
Let’ see planes can crash so I guess all planes should be banned. Children have fallen out of trees so let’s ban all trees and cut them all down all over the world. This is the kind of idiotic thinking of a Nancy Pelosi.

….Thank you Mark for the article.