US Senators would rather tax individuals than oil companies. That's one way to read recent Senate votes on tax cuts and leasing of federal land. It's somewhat distorted, maybe, but no more so than persistently successful arguments against leasing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain in Alaska.
On Mar. 25, the Senate approved less than half the tax reductions proposed by President George W. Bush for the next 10 years. In an amendment to its annual budget resolution, the Senate limited cuts to $350 billion. Earlier, the House approved tax relief totaling $726 billion.
These are budget resolutions lacking the effect of law. They'll have to be reconciled in a House-Senate conference committee likely to favor the president's proposal. But the Senate vote shows reluctance to trim tax rates while funding war in Iraq, for which Bush has made an initial request of $75 billion.
Presidential rebuke
So, while mostly political, the Senate's action is important. It rebukes a president in time of war. And it portends trouble for relief measures when Congress deals with tax legislation.
The problem here is not that Congress has pressed debate on the issue. Whether and by how much to ease taxation during a war represent excellent questions. Some will argue that lower tax rates would reduce government revenue and enlarge future deficits of a newly burdened budget. Others will counter that tax relief would stimulate the economy enough to compensate the treasury for rate cuts.
Whichever side is right, a government beset by these concerns should welcome any new revenue source. But 52 senators have different priorities.
Their Mar. 19 rejection of ANWR leasing wasn't just one more in a series of votes dedicated to the obstructionist fringe of environmentalism. This time it amended the annual budget resolution, the same legislative vehicle in which senators only 6 days later revealed their disdain for tax relief.
So on the one hand, the Senate withholds tax relief out of fear the move would diminish federal revenue at a time of extra cost. On the other hand, it refuses to allow economic activity certain to generate revenue for the government as soon as leasing begins and promising much greater payoff to the extent exploration and development succeed.
Why?
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) answers with a rhetorical question typical of the antileasing case: "Do we value this land, and are we prepared to protect it, or are we going to desecrate it, diminish it, change it forever for a small amount of oil?"
In fact, the land to which he refers is flat, usually frozen marsh, dark much of the year and already changed, however sparsely, by roads, villages, and military equipment. To suggest that leasing, drilling, and production operations would "desecrate" it is exaggeration. And to call 10.4 billion bbl—the mean US Geological Survey estimate for technically recoverable coastal-plain reserves—a "small amount of oil" is grotesque. That volume is nearly equal to half of current reserves estimated for all of the US. And it's more than the reserves base from which Brazil produces 1.5 million b/d.
Do "we," as Lieberman asks, indeed value ANWR's bleak coastal plain? The honest answer must be "no" until "we" portray the region's surface features with reasonable accuracy, until "we" recognize the potentially great value of developing hydrocarbon resources, and until "we" learn to handle oil-supply estimates with sensible perspective.
At a Mar. 12 hearing, Interior Sec. Gale Norton contrasted the coastal plain's stark scenery with beautiful, mountainous terrain appearing in a television advertisement opposed to ANWR leasing. She pointed out that the mountains are in the wilderness part of ANWR. On the coastal plain, she noted, "There are no trees. There are no deepwater lakes. There are no mountains like those in the video."
Familiar ruse
She thus exposed a familiar ruse: Display a pristine, unleasable part of ANWR to oppose leasing of a different, physically less-appealing area that already bears marks of development. Lieberman and other leasing opponents in Congress should end this protectionist charade. It conflicts with national interests.
The US needs whatever oil and gas ANWR might produce. Americans need the jobs promised by resource development. And the government needs the money.
