ANWR drilling bill doomed

It's surprising to get a bit of good news these days, but it looks as though the Senate will kill efforts to open up drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve.

A vote on the drilling plan will probably take place by Friday or early next week, and lobbying groups in favor of oil production in Alaska say they have not given up hope of achieving a slim Senate majority. But Republican officials say they are not counting on more than 48 votes for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"At this point, we don't have the 50 votes, and I don't think we're going to get them," a Republican official said. "So the Democrats will probably be able to strip it out."

Last week, the Senate GOP claimed they had 49 votes, just one short of the necessary 50 (Cheney would've been the tie breaker). In other words, they were using Bush's strategy of inevitability to try and sway a couple of votes, but the strategy was as effective as Bush's in the Security Council.

Posted March 18, 2003 06:50 AM | Comments (26)