http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/opinion/14wed3.html

 

December 14, 2005

Editorial

The Senator Who Cried Wolf

Strange things are afoot as Congress presses to end this year's woefully inadequate session by the weekend: coverage of impotence drugs has been restored in a Medicare budget proposal, while an emergency subsidy to help poor people pay their heating bills this winter is getting only anemic financing. But the biggest money issue being haggled over - the House and Senate dispute over cutting up to $50 billion in spending from assorted vital programs - is somehow tangled up in the Bush administration's insistence on drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The House has already rejected this perennial chestnut on the anti-environmental agenda, but Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, is making tooth-and-claw vows to prevail in the final negotiations. He will be one of the chief bargainers on the final compromise, and he insists that he won't sign off on any deal that omits Alaskan drilling. So what if important issues are on the table - like proposed harmful cuts in food stamps for the poor?

Clearly, damage to food stamps and the other draconian House cuts - in Medicaid, welfare child-support enforcement, student loans, etc. - should be rejected. This is particularly true in the context of the Republican leaders' parallel priority of enacting still more administration tax cuts to warm the hearts of the nation's most affluent this winter. But political negotiations in Washington inevitably involve posturing, and Senator Stevens has stepped forward as this season's Pagliacci of a posturer.

Alaska drilling should never be palmed off as a money-saving measure, but that is the sleight-of-hand being attempted. House moderates who oppose the drilling as well as the welfare cuts must stand fast.

They should keep in mind the senator's earlier melodramatic vow to resign from public office if pork money was rescinded for Alaska's notorious bridges to nowhere. An embarrassed Congress nevertheless scuttled the requirement to build the bridges. Alas, Senator Stevens remains at work.

 

 

Drew McConville

Communications Associate

The Wilderness Society

 

1615 M St, NW

Washington, DC 20036

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