She realized a vote was inevitable because the offshore moratorium expires at the end of September, a Democratic leadership aide said, and requires congressional renewal. Also, in response to a Senate compromise plan, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has indicated willingness to consider offshore drilling.
Pelosi, who’d already started to signal the change by cutting vulnerable freshman members loose to vote their political best interests on drilling issues, was under increasing pressure from vulnerable Democrats who wanted a vote.
As voters’ anger intensified this summer on high gas prices, Republicans had found that drilling in new areas was a political windfall. Republicans found their natural inclinations aligned with the polls in a year in which even they are expecting to lose 10 House seats, and likely more.
According to a Gallup poll in late July, 57 percent of Americans surveyed said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports easing restrictions on offshore drilling. Still, the poll found 58 percent more likely to vote for one supporting a windfall profits tax, and 67 percent more likely to vote for one supporting tax incentives for energy conservation.
Seizing the advantage despite minority status, the GOP forced Democrats to go to great lengths to avoid a drilling vote, all but canceling the appropriations process and resorting to parliamentary gimmicks to avoid drilling amendments.
But Pelosi’s drilling announcement indicated that she’s made a tactical move, not an unconditional surrender.
She stressed that drilling will have to be a part of a larger package that would include many elements that have been resisted by Republican members and leaders. A leadership aide said many of the energy proposals that were put forward by Democrats in July would wind up in the package. Many of them won majority House support but failed because of a parliamentary maneuver used to block GOP amendments.
In the CNN interview, she indicated that drilling, which she’s opposed for years, could be accompanied by “great things” like expansion of wind power, solar energy and biofuels. She hinted that the package could include the Democratic leadership’s “use it or lose it” plan to force drillers to produce their existing federal leases, more regulation of greenhouse gases, and that the federal government should get more money for the oil.
“It has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them,” Pelosi said.
She was even more emphatic that it would include a renewable electricity standard, a requirement that a certain percentage of electricity must be generated with renewable energy. The standard has faced broad Republican opposition. And she specifically mentioned releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which also faces Republican resistance.
Their inclusion is not an attempt to load the package with deal-killers that Republicans couldn’t support, a leadership aide said.
“If those are poison pills, they’re not serious,” the aide said. “If those are poison pills, they don’t understand the word ‘compromise.’ ”
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