Republicans will not stop until every last pristine piece of wilderness is destroyed. How many times do we have to say NO, Ted?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats will try to remove language from a pending budget bill that calls for the government to raise billions of dollars in leasing fees from oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Republican leaders, with White House support, are using the massive 2007 budget legislation to give oil companies access to the refuge, because budget bills can't be filibustered under Senate rules.
The legislation assumes about $6 billion in leasing fees and bonus bids would be paid by energy companies to drill in the refuge. The federal government could keep half the money to fund various programs and the other half would go Alaska.
Democrats John Kerry of Massachusetts and Maria Cantwell of Washington will offer an amendment to strip the ANWR language from the budget bill. The lawmakers had hoped to offer their amendment on Wednesday afternoon, but delayed it until Thursday because of a backlog of other pending amendments. A vote on striking the ANWR language was expected later in the week.
Many Senate Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, oppose drilling in the refuge. They argue the amount of oil in ANWR is not enough to justify threatening the area's polar bears, caribou and other wildlife.
In an e-mail to his supporters on Wednesday, Kerry said the Bush administration was "so beholden to the big oil and gas companies that turning over America's most precious natural resources on a fool's errand search for the last drop of oil is all they can think about."
Democrats also doubt the government would be able to raise the $6 billion in fees, as called for in the budget bill, based on the much lower prices companies have paid in recent years to lease tracts in other areas of Alaska's North Slope.
"It is irresponsible to base the country's budget on highly speculative and dubious projections of lease revenues for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," all nine Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee said in a letter last week to the panel's Republican chairman, Judd Gregg.
Greedy fucks.