ON DRILLING

“Congress returns... for an abbreviated session, with energy being the number one issue on the agenda. Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner, spent the August recess pushing for Congress to enact an ‘all of the above’ package to increase energy supplies and lower gasoline prices, and they will continue to do so. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, clearly thrown off balance by public opinion polls showing that a decisive majority of the electorate agrees with the Republicans on drilling, have a different, irresponsible agenda: running out the clock and preventing a straight up-or-down vote on drilling. But to do this successfully, they will have to continue their strategy of pretending to support compromise, while loading up energy legislation with poison pills that will make expanded drilling impossible... In the House, the Democratic leadership will offer a ‘compromise’ plan to allow drilling more than 100 miles from shore. (Which presumably means that if the next Prudhoe Bay is discovered 25 miles off the coast of Virginia or 50 miles from North Carolina, consumers should just shut up and be happy with oil from Mexico, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela instead.)” —The Washington Times