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Bully Pulpit

The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful. The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.

Friday, July 18, 2008

The Congressional Drilling Showdown

It’s a political fight the free-market guys actually can win.

By Ed Frank
National Review Online


President Bush’s lifting of the executive ban on offshore drilling this week is more than a symbolic gesture. It means the only thing preventing expanded offshore oil-and-gas development is a temporary, one-year congressional ban set to expire on September 30. While Congress has a habit of re-imposing this ban each year, it has never gotten around to writing it into permanent law. This creates a key opportunity for supporters of domestic energy production, including the president, to force a showdown.

It will take an act of Congress and the president’s signature (or a veto override in both the House and Senate) to extend the current ban on new offshore drilling. And since congressional Democrats have essentially shut down the appropriations process — because they know they would lose an amendment vote that would lift the ban — they don’t want to schedule a stand-alone vote that would extend the ban.

The word around Washington is that the Democrats plan to pass a long-term continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill that would fund government operations between October 1 and the inauguration of a new president in January. (Obviously, they’re hoping for a President Obama.) You can bet any final spending package will come with an extension of the offshore drilling ban. Democrats will assume that Republicans will go along with a deal to wrap up business and get home to campaign — daring them to oppose it.

If Republicans are smart, they’ll do just that. If they oppose a deal, they’ll force Democrats to explain to the American people just why they’d shut down the government rather than increase responsible domestic-energy production that would ease the pain at the pump.

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