Twenty-seven years after it was first established, he Congressional ban on offshore drilling officially and quietly expired today. The ban was not a prohibition on drilling per se. Rather, it was a ban on appropriating money for the Interior Department to process of new drilling leases. With the beginning of the new fiscal year, that prohibition will end, once Congress passes a budget resolution that restores the funding. After years of opposition to increasing domestic supplies of energy, a full year of fighting House Republicans on the issue, and a summer of defending itself against a vocal Republican minority and overwhelming public support for increased oil drilling, Congressional Democrats agreed last week to allow the ban to lapse this year.

New drilling, and the economic activity it will bring in the form of jobs, investment, and lower gas prices, could not come at a better time for the American economy. American oil companies, barred from exploration in domestic waters for so long, could be eager to return home to do business in America's relatively friendly business clime. They will bring jobs and capital with them that otherwise would have benefit ted the economies of other countries.

Exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf will likely lead to greater than anticipated yields. Historically, estimates of total recoverable reserves in a given field are low, and advances in drilling and recovery techniques will almost certainly increase the expected yields from offshore drilling. That oil will eventually hit the world market, some estimates run as little as three years, increasing overall supplies and lowering the price of a barrel of oil. Oil prices have been on a steady decline since mid-July, interrupted only by Hurricane Gustav and the financial turmoil of the last two weeks, when President Bush lifted the Executive branch ban on offshore drilling. Oil prices ended the day at $102 per barrel, up slightly recently. But that price represents a 31 percent drop from the record high of over $147 a barrel set on July 11th, four days before the president lifted the Executive ban.

House Republicans deserve all the credit for the expiration of the drilling ban. It was the August Republican protest on the floor of the House that finally convinced Democrats they would be held accountable if they continued to stand in the way of increased production in the face of high gasoline and oil prices. Democrats wisely decided not to force the issue roughly six weeks before an election, handing the Republicans a legislative victory of enormous proportions.

Sources in the House of Representatives are reporting that House Democrats are set to allow the Congressional ban on offshore drilling expire at the end of the month when the fiscal year ends. If the report turns out to be accurate, it would represent an epic political victory for Republicans and underscore just how seriously the American people's demand for increased development of American energy sources shook Democrats' expectations for the fall elections.

A House staffer said in an e-mail that House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) is telling reporters that Democrats on the committee are quietly preparing to drop language extending the ban from a continuing resolution soon to be passed. That resolution will fund government operations until separate appropriations bills can be passed after the election. The Congressional ban on offshore drilling is in truth a moratorium on funding for the processing of new drilling leases. Congress has annually renewed the moratorium every year since it first passed the funding ban in 1981. But pressure from minority Republicans and polls showing overwhelming majorities of the American people supporting increased drilling in the face of high oil and gasoline prices appear to have won the argument.

House Republicans have led the fight for increased domestic energy production, spending the August recess holed up in a darkened House chamber holding protest sessions of Congress designed to pressure vacationing Democrats to come back to Washington to vote on drilling legislation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who once vowed never to allow a vote on drilling, nevertheless acquiesced somewhat when she allowed the chamber to vote on a limited drilling package last week. Republicans were not satisfied with the passage of that bill, and there were indications that the House drilling bill would not pass the Senate. Continued Republican pressure and widespread ridicule of the Democrats' energy bill in the press contributed to the decision to let the drilling ban die quietly.

If the report is accurate, Republican Congressional candidates and Sen. John McCain stand to benefit from successfully forcing Congress to bend to the will of the American people. McCain has made a call for increased drilling and American production a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Democrats will attempt to take some credit for not standing in the way of the people's will by letting the ban die. But the energy issue has been owned by Republicans for the better part of the year. Republicans hope that the credit for it materializes at the polls in November.

In a recent interview, John McCain was asked to name a specific example of Sarah Palin's experience in terms of national security. Here's the exchange:



Yes, it's true that our energy needs do affect our national security priorites. As Alan Greenspan noted, the Iraq war was really all about oil, not illusory weapons of mass destruction. And the reason Condoleezza Rice graced Libya's Moammar Ghadafi with a state visit last week--even though she'd promised she wouldn't until Libya fulfilled its international obligation and finished paying the victims' families for its role in helping blow up Pan Am 103--was also oil. True, our friends the Saudis are, at this very moment, funding a virulently anti-American version of Wahhabism across the globe -- but, man, they have a lot of oil. All of this is true. Does that make it the case that Palin knows more about energy than any other person in the United States when it comes to energy?

And if building a natural gas pipeline and wanting to drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (a position McCain himself doesn't even agree with) automatically means that you're the smartest person in the room, why does Palin still think that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks? Hell, even the president doesn't trot out that false claim anymore.

House Democrats said Wednesday that they were open to a vote on a Republican oil drilling measure, reversing their stand against the legislation. Republicans called that a victory in their summer-long efforts to get the House to vote on increased domestic production of oil as a means of lowering gasoline prices. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steadfastly refused to bring up the Republicans' American Energy Act throughout June and July. But after an August recess in which many Republicans remained in Washington holding informal sessions on the House floor highlighting what they called Democrats' inaction on the energy front, and receiving good press for their efforts, Pelosi agreed to allow the vote under the regular order. In other words, the bill will be offered as a substitute to the Democrats' own energy legislation and will only need a majority to pass.

In her statement announcing the decision, Pelosi credited Republicans with forcing her hand.

"If [Republicans] want to drill offshore, we'll say, 'OK, You want to drill in the outer continental shelf? Let's have a discussion and a change of the relationship between our oil, which is owned by the American people, the desire of Big Oil for us to subsidize their drilling, and...the American people not getting the benefit of the profits.'"

Republicans call the Democrats' proposal on drilling a gimmick, noting that it would limit offshore to only those areas of the coast off of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf Coast of Florida more than 50 miles offshore. The Democrats' bill also would not open up access to the oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountains and oil fields in the North Slope of Alaska. "Speaker Pelosi's so-called 'energy' bill will do nothing to help our energy crisis," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) "It will multiply red tape and make it almost impossible to lower already skyrocketing oil costs."

The irony here for Democrats is that unless they do something to prevent it, the Congressional prohibition on offshore oil drilling will expire in less than three weeks on September 30th, at the end of the current fiscal year. Democrats want to address the issue of rising gas prices, but are loathe to cross their environmentalist base. They could accomplish both ends by simply doing nothing and allowing the ban to quietly expire. Republicans, however, have skillfully drawn Democrats into a debate on their ground, more domestic production. Now Democrats will have to explain why they propose to expand drilling as a solution to high gas prices, and why more drilling is not more of a solution.

After weeks of refusing to allow a vote in the House of Representatives on drilling for new domestic sources of oil, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) indicated today that she may indeed finally allow a vote on the measure. Republicans have been holed up in the House chamber, conducting a protest session of the House and calling on Pelosi to call the House back into session to vote on drilling. Some Democrats have also been signaling that they would like an opportunity to vote on drilling as well. Faced with growing pressure from the right and the center on an issue supported by more than 70% of Americans in some polls, Pelosi had no choice but to give in to Republican-led demands for a vote.

"They have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas. We can do that. We can have a vote on that.

But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and is not just a hoax on them."

Last week, Pelosi told ABC News that Republicans would have to, "use their imagination," in order to figure out a way to get a vote. Republicans did just that, continuing the ad hoc floor protest for more than a week after the House officially recessed for the month of August. Now it appears that their creativity, and the good press they have been receiving for their efforts are about to pay off.

The White House announced today that the president will not exercise his Article II Section 3 power to reconvene the House for a special session to debate oil drilling. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and several of his GOP House colleagues sent a letter to the president last week asking him to call the House back if it adjourned without a vote on offshore oil production. Republican House members have been holding protest sessions on the House floor since majority Democrats recessed for the five-week August break last Friday.

In declining to call a special session, the White House stressed that the president could not compel House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to hold a vote on drilling, it could only force her to gavel open one session. "We don't have plans to call Congress into session -- it won't make a difference if Democratic leaders are unwilling to bring up a bill for an up-down vote," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

While the White House is correct that it cannot force the Democrats' hand, the announcement has to come as a blow to Republican members, many of whom have returned to Washington to participate in the protest sessions. They would have appreciated an assist from the president in forcing Democrats to open a session of the House without bringing up drilling for a vote. Furthermore, there are Democrats who are siding with Republicans in the effort to increase American oil production. Seventeen of them voted with every Republican in opposing the leadership's motion to adjourn for the August recess. Those Democrats may have prevailed upon the leadership to call a vote if the House was forced back into session. Nevertheless, Republican members will continue their speeches to a recessed House chamber all through this week.

Sen. Barack Obama announced his energy policy today in a speech in Lansing, MI. Early reports on the speech revealed that Obama was going to call for an energy rebate to American families to be paid for by a windfall profits tax on American oil companies. He was also expected to discuss his new-found support for limited offshore drilling as a part of a broader energy bill containing incentives for alternative fuels. But there was another, unexpected, policy shift in Sen. Obama's speech: a call for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Obama proposed releasing 70 million barrels of light crude from the reserve, saying that supplies in the nation's emergency stockpile of oil could be replaced at a later date with heavier oil. The theory is that lighter crude is easier to refine into gasoline, and thus would have a more immediate impact on prices.

Republicans pointed out that just last month, however, Obama opposed opening up the strategic petroleum reserve. He told a St. Louis, MO, audience that the stockpile, "has to be reserved for a genuine emergency." McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds recalled that remark in a statement on Obama's energy plan today.

"The last release of oil from the strategic reserve came in response to Hurricane Katrina, but the only crisis that has developed since Barack Obama last rejected this idea two months ago is a slide in his poll numbers."

Sen. Barack Obama, celebrating his 47th birthday today, will give his campaign a present today in Lansing, MI, when he announces a new energy plan. The plan, dubbed "New Energy for America" will have as its centerpiece an energy rebate to American families to be paid for by a windfall profits tax on American oil companies. Obama also recently changed his position on offshore drilling, saying that he would now be open to expanding oil production at home as part of a package with incentives for alternative fuels. Obama had as recently as two weeks ago been opposed to increased drilling.

Both the energy rebate and support for drilling are new features of Obama's energy policy. His previous energy plan contained no mention of either, leading to speculation on the reason for the policy shift. Sen. John McCain has been hitting Obama hard on the issue of gas prices, running an ad directly linking Obama's refusal to support increased production and prices at the pump. House Republicans have also been putting a great deal of pressure on Democratic leaders of Congress to allow a vote on offshore drilling, a debate that they appear to be winning with the American people. Pols show that large majorities of Americans support increasing American oil production in an attempt to lower gas prices.

But an overlooked reason for the policy shift by the Obama campaign may be the vice-presidential search. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has reportedly been getting a lot of attention as a possible running mate for Sen. Obama. Kaine supports drilling off the Virginia coast, and will likely sign a bill passed last month by the state legislature to allow exploration for oil resources in Virginia coastal waters. The sudden change by the Obama campaign to favor limited exploration for oil may be designed to preempt questions about differences between Obama and his running mate.

Flush with success and armed with favorable press coverage of Friday's House floor protest by Republican lawmakers, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced today that Republicans will take to the floor again on Monday to continue pressing Democrats for a vote on offshore drilling. In a memo to colleagues prepared by Boehner and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), the Republican leadership urged lawmakers to come back to Washington for the demonstration, or spread the word in their districts.

The consequences of continued congressional inaction on gas prices are unacceptable. We've called on the Speaker to call Congress back into an emergency session this month and schedule a vote on the American Energy Act. We must continue to make a stand until the Speaker complies.

Friday's action seems to have moved the debate in favor of drilling. Sen. Barack Obama said in an interview on Saturday that he would be open to a compromise on energy legislation in the Senate that would allow offshore drilling in exchange for increased funding for alternative fuels. That is a major shift for Obama, whose official position as recently as two weeks ago was that new drilling would, "would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years." Now, Obama says that he does not want to be "rigid" in his opposition to more domestic oil production.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has been stubbornly refusing to allow a vote on drilling, is beginning to feel the heat as well. Confronted this morning on ABC's This Week with the words of Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), who said that, "There is going to be a vote...the message [on drilling] has been delivered," Pelosi allowed that "maybe" there would be one in September, "if it is part of a larger energy package."

The House officially adjourned for the five-week August recess today, but that did not stop Republicans from making their point about opening up oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. The House GOP had been pressuring Democratic leaders to hold a vote on offshore drilling before the recess, and with the help of 17 Democrat members came within one vote of defeating the motion to adjourn. Today, Republicans took their protests directly to the floor of the House, refusing to leave the chamber after it adjourned, and continuing to make their speeches.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded by turning off the lights, cameras, and microphones in the House chamber. But Republicans were undeterred. They spoke through megaphones in the dark, brought visitors from the House gallery down to the floor, and chanted, "Work, work, work!" as the event began to take on the feel of a revolt. Republican leaders couched their actions in exactly those terms.

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) called the action, "the new Boston Tea Party." Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) said, "This is the people's House. This is not Pelosi's politiburo." Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) implored those watching from the gallery, "Tell your friends the Republicans refuse to go quietly!" adding that he would not leave until, "we call this Congress back into session and vote for energy independence." House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called the event historic.

"The historic event that unfolded today on the floor of the People's House was about more than gas prices. We witnessed the power of American democracy in action. Dozens of House Republicans joined hundreds of American citizens on the House floor to protest Speaker Pelosi's decision to send Congress home for the rest of the summer without voting for more American-made energy and lower gas prices.

Today, House Republicans and the American people stood side by side to make history together. We sent a powerful message to Speaker Pelosi, Senators Reid and Obama, and other top Democrats that we will not rest until they allow a vote for more American energy and lower gas prices...House Republicans and the American people showed today that we will stand united together on the most important issue facing our nation – and we will fight boldly until Congress finally heeds our will."