House GOP to Resume Drilling Protest

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."

With those two concessions under their belts, and with large majorities of the American people supporting an increase in domestic oil production, House Republicans smell blood in the water. On Monday, they will press their point again, and dare the Democratic leaders of Congress to defy the will of the American people. In an election year that is not supposed to be kind to Republicans, high oil and gasoline prices is one of the only issues on which the GOP enjoys a majority of public support, and on which it could do damage to majority Democrats. So far, with their refusal to allow even a vote on increasing oil production to help ease prices, Democrats are playing right into Republican hands.