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Environmental group to lawmakers: 'Don't drill and drive'
An environmental group is criticizing the House Republican plan to tie a new federal highway bill to increased offshore oil drilling.
The New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said in a memo to reporters Monday that its message to lawmakers this week could be compressed to one sentence: "Don't drill and drive."
GOP leaders in the House are planning to use revenue from increased offshore oil drilling to pay for their version of a new surface transportation bill that would last four years and cost $260 billion. Transportation advocates have sought a long-term reauthorization of highway and transit programs, which currently expire on March 31, but the NRDC said it should not come like this.
"America’s transportation infrastructure is falling apart for lack of funding to repair and improve our vast network of bridges, roads, rails, runways and ports," the organization said in a memo to reporters.
"Unfortunately, Republican leaders in the House are heading down a partisan path, as they have so often," the NRDC memo continued. "They are doing this even though the transportation bill is way behind schedule; funding has been kept alive through eight short-term extensions over the past three years."
"With the current federal surface transportation law set to expire on March 31, the Senate is poised to pass a bi-partisan transportation bill this month — a bill co-sponsored by one of the most liberal and one of the most conservative members of the senate, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK)," the group said Monday. "Sen. Boxer has implored her House colleagues not to 'load this bill' with very controversial items. She applauded the Environment and Public Works Committee’s 'model of bipartisanship' in passing its portion of the transportation bill unanimously back in November."
By contrast, the group said the GOP highway bill was "a sop to Big Oil."
