RINO is the acronym for Republicans In Name Only - a perfectly fitting description of the Republicans who threatened to vote against the budget reduction bill - unless a provision was removed which would open the arctic National Wildlife Refuge (www.anwr.org) to oil development.
In an effort to get the overall budget to point back in the direction of fiscal responsibility, the House leadership agreed to remove the aNWR provision, knowing that the Senate version of the bill contained the aNWR provision, and would likely remain in the conference committee compromise.
Conservative Republicans in the House, who have fought for nearly two decades to develop domestic energy resources, balked, and threatened to vote against the bill unless the aNWR provision was included. Consequently, the House leadership had no choice but to pull the bill at the last moment, rather than risking a defeat, which would mean no budget reduction bill at all.
Democrats, who constantly ridicule Republicans for the ballooning budget deficits, lined up solidly against the budget reduction bill promising all 203 Democrat votes against it. Since passage of any bill requires a minimum of 218 votes, only 15 Republican defectors are needed to sink any bill that Democrats oppose.
Twenty-five RINOs signed a letter to the House leadership pledging to kill the budget reduction bill if it contained the aNWR provision. Some of these RINOs are from New England states, that are demanding subsidies to help cover the cost of heating oil. Where is the logic in voting to prevent an increase in the supply of heating oil, and then demanding that everyone else help pay their rising fuel bills?
Some of these RINOs represent four states (NY, IL, Pa, MI) that consume 236 million gallons of petroleum per day, but produce only a fraction of one percent of the nation’s energy requirement. Their refusal to permit additional production is an endorsement of unlimited energy prices, expanding dependency on foreign energy sources, and the continued export of U.S. energy dollars to nations that are not our friends.
These RINOs justify their stance with the tired old claim that development of aNWR will destroy the last great wilderness. Ridiculous. Suppose that Dulles airport were duplicated in South Carolina, and a wall built around the entire 2,000 acres, and that every tree and blade of grass were removed. Would that destroy the entire state of South Carolina? Certainly not.
Oil development in aNWR would not require removing anything but a little frozen tundra in a plot of about 2,000 acres in a wilderness area the size of South Carolina. Before Prudhoe Bay was developed, environmentalists claimed that development would prevent the caribou from mating, another claim environmentalists use against aNWR. The fact is that caribou have increased in Prudhoe Bay from about 3000, to more than 30,000 after oil development in the area. The same increase can be expected in aNWR.
americans must recognize that the only way to solve the energy problem is to produce more of it. We cannot have the transportation, electricity, the conveniences and the economic prosperity we seek, without adequate supplies of affordable energy. We can have the energy we need, from domestic sources, with very little adverse impact on the environment. That is, we can have it if these RINOs get out of the way.
apparently, to these people, it is more important to satisfy the demands of their environmental organization backers than to ensure that the rest of their constituents get some measure of relief from the energy shortfall that can only get worse without new sources of supply.
Environmental organizations pay expensive lobbyists to wine and dine these RINOs to keep them in line. The only power more potent than the checkbooks of these environmental groups are the ordinary americans who vote, and are hurting enough to pick up the phone and tell their elected representatives to get out of the way of aNWR progress.
Despite the love and respect these RINOs have for the caribou and tundra, neither will vote in the election next year. americans who do vote, who are being forced to pay unnecessarily high gas, heating, and electric bills, are far more important than the caribou or the tundra. Elected officials need to be reminded of this.
The Republican leadership will try again to bring the budget reduction act to the floor for a vote. If these RINOs hear from a sufficient number of real gas-buying people, they could very well reappraise their loyalty to the caribou, and to environmental organizations.
If this Congress fails to open aNWR now, it could be another decade before the opportunity arises again.
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