And it's begun

[SirMyztiq]

[url="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/bush.energy.ap/index.html"]http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/...y.ap/index.html[/url]

Republican gains in the Senate could give President Bush his best chance yet to achieve his No. 1 energy priority -- opening an oil-rich but environmentally sensitive Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling.

If he is successful, it would be a stinging defeat for environmentalists and an energy triumph that eluded Bush his first four years in the White House. A broader agenda that includes reviving nuclear power, preventing blackouts and expanding oil and gas drilling in the Rockies will be more difficult to enact.

Republicans in the House and Senate said this week they plan to push for Alaska refuge drilling legislation early next year, and they predict success, given the 55-44-1 GOP Senate majority in the next Congress. Democrats and some environmental activists say continued protection of the refuge has never been as much in doubt.

"It's probably the best chance we've had," Rep. Richard Pombo, R-California, chairman of the House Resources Committee and a vocal drilling advocate, said in an interview.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he will press to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as part of the government's budget deliberations early in 2005. That would enable drilling proponents to skirt an otherwise certain Democratic-led filibuster that would be difficult to overcome.

"With oil trading at nearly $50 a barrel, the case for ANWR is more compelling than ever," said Domenici. "We have the technology to develop oil without harming the environment and wildlife."

Bush is also expected in his second term to renew his call for action by Congress on a broader, largely pro-production, energy agenda -- from easing rules for oil and gas drilling on federal land in the Rocky Mountains to expanding clean-coal technology and improving the reliability of the electricity grid.

New tax incentives to spur construction of next-generation nuclear power plants also will be back on the table after Democrats and some moderate Republicans scuttled it last year. Greater use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline also has wide support at the White House and in Congress.

Drilling in the Alaska refuge has been all but dismissed as unachievable since drilling opponents two years ago beat back a pro-development measure by a 52-48 vote. Bush did not make an issue of the refuge during the presidential campaign.

But with four new GOP senators expected to support ANWR drilling and the loss of a Republican moderate who opposed it, drilling advocates believe they now have at least 52 votes in the Senate, enough to get the measure through Congress as part of the budget process. By Senate rules, opponents of drilling cannot filibuster a budget measure. ANWR qualifies as a budget measure because it will generate income for the government from oil companies.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press that drilling in the Arctic refuge remains a Bush priority, particularly now that oil prices are high.

"I've seen the oil prices go up and down over time, and people seem to assume that when prices get high, they always stay high," she said. "But you need to get the investments done at that point so you've got the projects that are continuing on when the prices are low."

Environmentalists already are gearing up to wage an intense lobbying campaign to keep oil rigs out of the refuge's coastal plain, a breeding ground for caribou, home to polar bears and musk oxen and site of an annual influx of millions of migratory birds.

"This is as serious a threat to the refuge as any that has come before," said Jim Waltman of the National Wildlife Federation. "But the facts haven't changed. This is still a magnificent area and it can still be damaged by oil drilling."

But geologists believe 11 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the refuge's tundra and ice, and drilling supporters contend they can be tapped without damage to the environment or wildlife.

Regardless the outcome in the Alaska refuge dispute, the path to getting a comprehensive energy bill is likely to be full of potholes. Twice in the last four years lawmakers have agreed on 85 percent or more of an energy package only to see final action derailed over narrow, although intensely contentious, issues.

Some lawmakers, including Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, senior Democrat on the energy committee that will write the legislation, argue that lawmakers should focus instead on passing separate bills on the most urgent and widely supported measures.

Some of that already has occurred, such as the recently approved loan guarantees for a proposed $20 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states.

Despite the GOP's new strength, Senate Democrats can still put the brakes on energy measures they strongly oppose through filibusters such as the one that blocked an energy bill in 2003. The issue then in dispute was liability protection for makers of the MTBE gasoline additives, which have been found to contaminate water systems.

However, given the stronger GOP majority, sustaining such filibusters may be more difficult.



[url="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/social.security.ap/index.html"]http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/...y.ap/index.html[/url]

Fresh off re-election, President Bush is dusting off an ambitious plan to overhaul Social Security, a controversial proposal that had been shelved because of politics and the administration's focus on tax cuts and terrorism.

Bush envisions a framework that would partially privatize Social Security with personal investment accounts similar to 401(k) plans.

A starting point is a plan proposed by a presidential commission in 2001 that would divert 2 percent of workers' payroll taxes into private accounts. The remaining 4.2 percent -- and the Social Security taxes employers pay -- would go into the system, helping fund benefits for current retirees. That leaves a shortfall of at least $2 trillion to continue funding benefits for those current retirees.

Bush said his commission, headed by the late Democratic Sen. Patrick Moynihan of New York, provided "a good blueprint."

For future retirees, base benefits would be cut by tying them to inflation instead of wage growth, with stock market gains assumed to make up any shortfall. The concept gained support in the stock market boom of the late 1990s.

Bush has not said how the $2 trillion transition costs would be funded, nor did his commission. Record deficits, Bush's desire to make his five rounds of tax cuts permanent and the rising cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan are major obstacles.

Republicans say doing nothing is worse. "There are a lot of things you could do, but none of them are without some sacrifice," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.

Graham's plan would let workers divert into accounts 4 percent of their payroll taxes and spreads transition costs over 10-15 years. He said the yearly price tag of $80 billion to $100 billion could be funded by closing tax loopholes, cutting pork barrel spending, borrowing money or temporarily raising the payroll tax cap on earnings.

"No idea is off the table," Graham said. He thinks Republicans have about a six-month political window before Bush's election momentum starts to fade and attention turns to mid-term elections.

Any plan needs Democratic support. But some of Bush's biggest Democratic allies for reforming Social Security won't be around in January. Texas Rep. Charlie Stenholm was defeated last week after districts were redrawn by the Legislature. And Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana is retiring.

Other Democrats have pledged to fight Bush's attempts to privatize the New Deal program known as the untouchable, third rail of politics.

To fund accounts, "we're talking about an infusion of $2 trillion in revenues to maintain current benefits, and we don't have that money now," said Rep. Bob Matsui of California, top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee.

Matsui said he is eager to see a "fiscally responsible" plan from the Bush administration. He also is skeptical of costs and funding options, citing overruns on the Medicare prescription drug plan that were hidden from Congress.

"If they put a plan out there and try to pass it and it's not vetted instantly and it doesn't add up, I will not allow this thing to go," he said.

Democrats argue that the system can be altered, not demolished, to improve future funding. "It doesn't require a radical adjustment like privatization," Matsui said.

But supporters of accounts say Democrats can no longer criticize partial privatization without offering their own plan to deal with Social Security's $3.7 trillion, 75-year shortfall. As more baby boomers retire, the system will start paying out in benefits more than it collects in taxes in 2018.

"For Democrats, the old scare tactic message is not winning them votes," said Derrick Max, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a business-backed group lobbying for accounts.

A campaign promise in 2000, Bush created his controversial Social Security commission of Republicans and Democrats, all whom supported privatizing the system to some degree. Under political pressure, the commission proposed three plans instead of one, none of which Bush endorsed. Only one was regarded as viable, while the others provided varying degrees of political cover to the administration and account supporters.

The whole idea was shelved after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Most Republicans ran away from the issue in the mid-term 2002 elections, with the party advising them to avoid saying "privatization."

Democrat John Kerry tried to make Social Security an issue during the 2004 presidential campaign. "I will not privatize it. I will not cut the benefits," he had vowed.

Bush said Democratic attacks on GOP Social Security proposals are not new. "You'll hear the same rhetoric you hear every campaign," he said at one point.

Graham says bringing Republicans on board, let alone Democrats, will be a challenge. "I really think you're going to be surprised about how much Republican pushback you will find," he said.

Republicans and pro-privatization groups are optimistic. Max said Bush had "some amount of mandate" on the issue.

Opponents disagree. "This was an election focused on homeland security, and not Social Security," said Barbara Kennelly, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which opposes accounts.







The destruction of our so few animal refugees for human and monetary gain?
Yup, the GOP.

The privatization of SS in order to cut back benefits and make it available to the ones that know about the hidden cost and can afford them?
Yup, the GOP

And this is just the start!

Soon to come...
Appointing neo-conservative judges that would fully support everything you do

Amending the Constitution to fit your own religious agenda
*Roe vs. Wade
*Gay marriage

Trying to please those who pay your daddy

and more to come!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I'm not even going to waste my time...your posts are so divisively partisan...

[dUSt]

Thank God.

[Theoketos]

Ok, Thank you Lord!

[homeschoolmom]

yes... thank you, God!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Is this all because I'm not going to debate it?

[homeschoolmom]

we're tired of debating...

[Ash Wednesday]

When I first read the beginning sentance, I thought it said "Republican girls in the Senate"...

My eyes must be tired.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='homeschoolmom' date='Nov 11 2004, 01:27 AM'] we're tired of debating... [/quote]
Good. I don't plan on debating politics much more for a while. Just praying.

I'm sick of division.

Ut Unum Sint!!!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Nov 11 2004, 01:28 AM'] When I first read the beginning sentance, I thought it said "Republican girls in the Senate"...

My eyes must be tired. [/quote]
I wasn't aware that Ahnold was against Senate Republicans now, too...

[Ash Wednesday]

I thought "Woo...men love those Hot Republican Girls!"

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Nov 11 2004, 12:28 AM'] Ut Unum Sint!!! [/quote]
amen, brother!

[Lil Red]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Nov 10 2004, 10:30 PM'] I thought "Woo...men love those Hot Republican Girls!" [/quote]

[Theoketos]

Ut unum Sit....

My Fiance is a beautiful Republican...

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Theoketos' date='Nov 11 2004, 01:37 AM'] Ut unum Sit....

My Fiance is a beautiful Republican... [/quote]