Bush Acts on Drilling, Challenging Democrats
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CARL HULSE
NYT
WASHINGTON — President Bush lifted nearly two decades of executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline on Monday while challenging Congress to open up more areas for exploration to address soaring energy prices.
Democrats in Congress, joined by environmentalists, criticized the step and ridiculed it as ineffectual, while most Republicans and industry representatives applauded it as long overdue.
The lifting of the moratorium — first announced by Mr. Bush’s father, President George Bush, in 1990 and extended by President Bill Clinton — will have no real impact because a Congressional moratorium on drilling enacted in 1981 and renewed annually remains in force. And there appeared to be no consensus for lifting it in tandem with Mr. Bush’s action.
Rather than signaling a change in the country’s policy, the president’s decision appeared only to harden well-established positions, intensifying an already contentious issue in the middle of an election year.
“For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production,” Mr. Bush said in a brief Rose Garden appearance in which he sought to saddle his party’s opponents with responsibility for gasoline prices exceeding $4 per gallon. “Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying at the pump.”
(Continued here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — President Bush lifted nearly two decades of executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline on Monday while challenging Congress to open up more areas for exploration to address soaring energy prices.
Democrats in Congress, joined by environmentalists, criticized the step and ridiculed it as ineffectual, while most Republicans and industry representatives applauded it as long overdue.
The lifting of the moratorium — first announced by Mr. Bush’s father, President George Bush, in 1990 and extended by President Bill Clinton — will have no real impact because a Congressional moratorium on drilling enacted in 1981 and renewed annually remains in force. And there appeared to be no consensus for lifting it in tandem with Mr. Bush’s action.
Rather than signaling a change in the country’s policy, the president’s decision appeared only to harden well-established positions, intensifying an already contentious issue in the middle of an election year.
“For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production,” Mr. Bush said in a brief Rose Garden appearance in which he sought to saddle his party’s opponents with responsibility for gasoline prices exceeding $4 per gallon. “Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying at the pump.”
(Continued here.)
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