ANWR Back On The Table

Via The Washington Post:

In a bleary, pre-dawn vote today, the House narrowly passed a sweeping, five-year budget plan for cutting spending for Medicare and other entitlement programs by $39.7 billion, shortly after voting to open the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.

The authority to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration -- long sought by President Bush, energy companies and Republican leaders -- was attached to the fiscal 2006 defense spending bill that has widespread support in both parties because of its funding for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense bill passed at 5:04 a.m. by a 308-106 vote after a bipartisan parliamentary maneuver to scuttle the bill over the drilling provision fell 13 votes short. The budget bill passed the House at 6:07 a.m. on a 212-206 vote, with nine Republicans joining a united Democratic Party in opposition.

This budget vote was part of a conference agreement on the Deficit Reduction Act, which originally passed the House last month only after provisions for drilling in ANWR were stripped by "moderate" Republicans.

In a controversial but nifty move, however, Republicans attached authority to drill in ANWR to the 2006 defense bill, eliciting complaints from Democrats like Harry Reid, who accused Republicans of daring Dems to vote against a defense bill and complained that this was an unrelated provision that violated Senate rules. Such a maneuver might have stretched legislative rules, but I think it's even more of a stretch for Democrats to claim that reducing our dependency on foreign oil - namely oil purchased from the Middle East - isn't a national security matter.

That said, this was my favorite part of the report:

"This [budget] bill is the largest raid on student aid in history," said Rep. George Miller (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House education committee. "At a time when millions of American families are struggling to keep up with skyrocketing tuition costs, it is shameful for Congress to raid student aid in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans."

It amazes me that liberals are incapable of understanding (or at least unwilling to admit) that federal subsidies - guaranteed money for universities - are one direct cause of rising tuition prices.