Reply #3: I read it will require 60 votes, which makes passage unlikely. [View All]

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15cong.html

But Mr. Stevens and Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have refused to abandon the drilling plan, which is as close to approval as it has ever been in two decades of debate. The idea of adding it to the Pentagon measure took on new urgency after House leaders suggested it might be the only way to win approval of both the budget cuts and the drilling initiative.

The military spending measure, already tied up in another dispute over treatment of terror detainees, is likely to be one of the final bills passed this year and could also contain aid for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast as well as money for avian flu preparation, making it a difficult bill to resist.

Senate aides said they were trying to determine whether attaching the drilling provision to the Pentagon measure would prompt a filibuster and whether they could round up the 60 votes to break one. The budget measure had been the first choice of the drilling advocates, since it is exempt from filibuster under Senate rules.

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said he was willing to pursue any option to win approval of Arctic drilling. "I support opening ANWR to energy production to help increase our energy independence and protect our nation from terrorists taking our energy supplies hostage, and want to move it through the House and Senate however I can," Mr. Frist said in a statement.