At the very least, Democrats saved themselves an awkward confrontation on gas prices Wednesday when they canceled a committee vote on the Interior spending bill.

Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.) was planning to push his offshore drilling bill as a remedy for oil and gas costs, just as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and President Bush made their tag-teamed push for drilling off the country’s coastlines.

Republicans say they suspect Democrats might have nixed it because they were worried they would lose the vote or, in beating Peterson back, become part of the Republicans’ 2008 campaign storyline.  

“We think the vote was extremely close,” said Peterson chief of staff Jordan Clark. “They were wondering, ‘What the heck do we do now?’ ”

Democrats say they didn’t cancel it to avoid a showdown, but to get work done on the emergency war-spending bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has set a deadline for completing the bill before Congress departs for the Independence Day recess, but it was put off again Wednesday.

With Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) negotiating a way to get the bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to the president’s desk, he didn’t have time to chair a protracted committee markup.

“The chairman is working on the supplemental,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “That’s our key concern.”

A Democratic aide noted that Obey canceled three other full committee markups this week as well.

The cancellation of the vote on Peterson’s plan did allow House Democrats to concentrate on responding to President Bush’s call for more drilling and on tweaking McCain for his change of heart on the topic.

In a Rose Garden news conference Wednesday, President Bush responded to the high price of gasoline by urging Congress to allow more drilling of the Outer Continental Shelf. He said lifting the current moratorium on drilling could produce about 18 billion barrels of oil.

“Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today’s painful levels — or even higher — our nation must produce more oil,” Bush said.

His call came a day after McCain reversed his opposition to offshore drilling.

House Democrats contend that oil and gas companies already have plenty of access to federal land and waters, but aren’t using it. They say oil and gas companies have leased 68 million acres of federal land and waters for oil and gas that the companies aren’t developing.

Democrats held a press conference to highlight “use it or lose it” legislation by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) to compel companies to produce from their leases.

Peterson lost his attempt to get the Appropriations Interior subcommittee to end the drilling moratorium last week on a party-line vote. But he’d announced plans to try a similar move at Wednesday’s markup.

Peterson tried to remove the moratorium last year at the Appropriations Committee, but lost in a 29-37 vote.

Peterson would have had to switch five votes, and there have been no public defections. Last year, six Democrats voted to lift the ban and six Republicans voted to keep it. The members of the committee are generally senior members with safe seats whose ability to bring home local projects helps win over any voter discontent on national issues.