Reid won’t allow off-shore vote in the Senate

http://www.lvrj.com/breaking_news/25448499.html

WASHINGTON — Sen. Harry Reid said today he will not allow a Senate vote on opening new offshore areas to oil drilling, prompting a Republican to charge the Senate majority leader was “scared chicken” to allow senators to decide on the matter.

Reid said a call by President Bush for Congress to repeal a law that prohibits new drilling was not realistic. Bush issued the challenge after announcing he was lifting a long-standing executive order that bans offshore energy exploration off the East and West coasts.

“The president is trying to make this a political gimmick, and we’re trying to figure out a way to do something about these (gasoline) prices,” Reid said. “And we are interested in increasing domestic production but we want to be realistic as to what expectations should be.”

Reid told reporters he is more interested in solutions that would seek to curb oil price speculation, release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and call on energy companies to explain why they are not drilling on oil leases they already have been granted by the government.

In a sign of rising tensions over rising gasoline prices, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., shortly afterward charged Reid was afraid to allow votes on increasing energy production.

“Does it seem to you like it does to me that Harry Reid is either scared chicken to have a vote? Or has he decided he is going to dictate to the United States Senate,” Domenici said at a news conference.

Domenici went on, adding Reid “is saying ‘I am frightened with the idea we are going to have a vote on a new plan for this huge reserve of gas and oil that belongs to none other than the people of the United States who are clamoring for us to produce more oil.’ ”

In response, Reid spokesman Jon Summers said: “This is the United States Senate. It is not a schoolyard. Name calling is not going to do anything to lower energy prices. We need Republicans to work with us on a policy that will protect consumers and lower gas prices.”

Talking to reporters, Reid said the United States cannot merely produce its way out of energy dependence. “The math doesn’t add up,” he said.

“There is not a single Democrat that doesn’t think we can do a better job with domestic production, but for this Johnny One Note of just drill, drill, drill, it is not going to do the trick.”