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Senate Drilling Plan: A Dry Hole
September 19 2008
The Wall Street Journal

A bipartisan effort in the Senate to expand offshore drilling in exchange for increased spending on alternative energy and conservation has run out of gas.

Leaders of the so-called Gang of 20 – 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators – announced Friday that they’ve given up pushing their proposal until after the November election.

“Unfortunately, with the fiscal crisis unfolding, time to debate a comprehensive energy policy is not available. Instead, we will share our plan with our colleagues and ask that the New Era bill be among the first orders of business when Congress reconvenes,” Sens. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) and Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) said in a joint statement. A Conrad spokesman added that with the election just weeks away, “the politics just aren’t right for us to talk about something that’s bipartisan.”

The proposal’s failure to get off the ground – just seven weeks after it was announced, and before its authors had unveiled the legislative fine print – follows sharp public attacks on the group’s Republican members from conservatives furious that the proposal involved raising taxes on oil companies to pay for new energy spending programs. Conservative radio-show host Rush Limbaugh also accused Republicans who favored the compromise of giving a “gift” to presidential candidate Barack Obama and other Democrats seeking election this fall.

The proposal would have opened additional acreage in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s western coast to drilling, and allowed Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to “opt in” to drilling off their shores if their legislatures approve. But it would also have raised billions of dollars for conservation and energy-efficiency programs partly by making oil companies no longer eligible for a manufacturing tax credit and repealing other tax breaks. Some estimates have put the potential savings from such a move at $13 billion over 10 years.

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