Dear Friends of the Arctic Natl Wildlife Refuge,
Bush is AGAIN! including drilling revenues in his budget! Join the
National Call-In Day, please call your representative and senator AND in
particular need as many calls as possible, NOW, to Representative Nussle,
Chairman to the House Budget Committee.
His DC office number is 202-225-2911 and a District office number is
563-326-1841.
See more on Mr. Nussle below, and specific points to make with his
office.
Help Protect the Arctic by making your calls! Thanks
Please take action to prevent another year of attacks to the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge!
National Call in Day February 15th - Call your Senator and
Representative.
(If you cannot call on Wednesday - please still call this week).
Despite President Bush's announcement in last week's State of the Union
address that “America is addicted to oil,” he is once again turning to
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in hopes of a quick fix to our energy
challenges. As we begin a new year, the Bush administration should
remember the lessons we learned last year: that bending the rules to
attach controversial issues, like Arctic drilling, to unrelated budget
bills is unacceptable and unethical. This lesson was clearly illustrated
when a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the House
forced powerful congressional leaders to remove Arctic drilling from the
budget.
On February 15th, the House and Senate will meet in committee to discuss
the budget for the first time. They will have an opportunity to
incorporate last year's lesson by disregarding Bush's proposal and
creating a budget that DOES NOT include Arctic drilling provisions.
However, the only way to ensure that Congress does the right thing is to
let them know between now and then that we are counting on them to keep
Arctic out of the budget.
Please take action today to prevent another year of pointless debate and
an endless number of Arctic budget votes. Tell your members it is time
to put the Arctic debate behind us and move on to real, clean energy
solutions.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION USING OUR CALL ALERT-- here you will find more
talking points and local phone numbers for your members. (here is the
link to the call alert:
http://capwiz.com/awc/callalert/index.tt?alertid=8458941&type=CO)
In order for us to be successful, we need to receive as much feedback
from the members as possible. So once you've made your call please be
sure to fill out the report form at the end of the action alert and let
us know what the member or their staff said.
Thank you for your continued support in protecting wild Alaska!
Nussle
Since becoming Budget Chairman, Jim Nussle has said publicly that he does
not believe that Arctic Refuge drilling belongs in the federal budget
process. Despite his support for drilling, he has indicated that he
feels this way because Arctic drilling is a policy initiative rather than
an existing program that is currently making money, and therefore it
should not be part of a deficit reduction effort.
("Oil interests wanted to attach the wilderness drilling language to the
budget bill because it can't be filibustered. But the Manchester
Republican refused, saying that policy language, without corresponding
actual revenue, should not be part of the budget." Cedar Rapids
Gazette, Nussle explains oil drilling decision, Budget chairman rejected
bill language, Monday, March 14, 2005)
Last year when the annual House Budget resolution was released, Nussle
made a number of public statements saying that, as in years past, he had
not included Arctic Refuge drilling in his budget plan. However, Nussle
HAD included a spending cut directive to the House Resources Committee,
knowing that this Committee would use this spending cut directive to push
an Arctic drilling program. The ultimate inclusion of Arctic drilling in
the budget reconciliation bill later in the year nearly sabotaged the
entire budget reconciliation process -- arguably Nussle's top legislative
priority for 2005.
Proponents of drilling have threatened, once again, to include Arctic in
the reconciliation process. This year they would ideally like to see a
reconciliation bill that includes ONLY Arctic drilling. If this were to
move forward as a single issue bill, it would be an incredible violation
of the spirit of the reconciliation process, which, because of its
special rules against filibuster, is meant ONLY as a deficit reduction
vehicle, and is explicitly NOT to be used to promote controversial policy
decisions.
The Arctic campaign would like to put pressure on Chairman Nussle from
all across Iowa to stay true to his beliefs and ensure that his federal
budget is not overtaken, once again, by this controversial policy
provision which does not have the support to pass and does not provide
real deficit relief.
Here are two talking points/questions to help guide what you may say at
events with Chairman Nussle:
· Last year when talking at various town hall meetings you said
that you didn't think an Arctic drilling proposal belonged in the federal
budget and that you were not going to include such a provision. Yet,
Arctic drilling was ultimately included in, and nearly brought down, the
entire reconciliation process until it was removed. Will you make sure
that this controversial policy proposal in not part of the budget this
year?
· In the President's State of the Union he said that our nation
needs to end its addiction to oil -and last year efforts to pass Arctic
drilling failed in both the House and the Senate. If the President and
Congress are serious about forward-looking energy policy, we need to put
aside this shortsighted fixation on drilling the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. We shouldn't be forced to stomach another year of drilling
proponents trying to sneak through this oil company giveaway that would
do nothing to help consumers, when we could be growing clean energy
solutions like ethanol and biodiesel, right now.
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