WASHINGTON — In an unusually quiet session, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee passed a bill to mandate new oil lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and allow construction of the Ambler Road, crossing protected federal land in Northwest Alaska.
Lawmakers approved those items early Wednesday, as part of a budget reconciliation bill, with barely a peep from the Republican side of the room.
Democrats taunted. They fired off passionate assertions that usually get a rise out of the other side. They cajoled. They pleaded. Nothing they did could get Republicans on the committee to debate them.
Alaska Congressman Nick Begich III, like other Republicans, sat calmly scrolling on his phone or leafing through papers.
Republicans had a strategy, and they stuck with it.
Democrats tried to defeat portions of the bill with more than a hundred amendments. The first one would’ve removed the requirement to hold oil lease sales in the Arctic Refuge and killed any chance of ever drilling there.
“The Trump administration's reckless and thoughtless push to sell off the refuge isn't about lowering energy costs. It's about sacrificing your public lands for his billionaire buddies, and that's why I urge support for this amendment,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif. “We should be voting to permanently protect this special place rather than auctioning it off to the highest bidder.”
In response, Republicans said nothing. Although, as soon as Huffman yielded the mic, Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., made an announcement: Sandwiches were enroute.
“Soon we'll have lunch in the back,” Westerman said. “We're not going to recess for lunch, but if you want to go have lunch, you can go in the back room and have lunch.”
That’s how it went, through more than a hundred amendments, for hours at a time.
Democrats said Republicans wanted to avoid debating policy so that the bill wouldn’t get derailed in the Senate. A reconciliation bill is special because Senators can’t filibuster it, but to qualify, all the components have to be about revenue and spending.
The silent treatment had another benefit: The proceedings moved along faster. Still, it was after midnight when the committee passed the bill, by a vote of 26-17. One Democrat voted for it.
Alaska Congressman Nick Begich did not respond to an interview request but he claimed the win.
“This is a major victory for Alaska and for American energy independence,” he said in a statement emailed from his office.
At the U.S. Capitol, opponents of drilling in the refuge often cite the Gwich’in people, whose traditional culture depends on the caribou that give birth in the refuge. But oil development is more popular on the North Slope, in and near the refuge.
The bill “will advance Iñupiaq self-determination on our homelands and support economic development opportunities in our region that are crucial to sustaining our Indigenous culture,” said Nagruk Harcharek, president of a well-funded advocacy group called Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, by email.
Athan Manuel, the Sierra Club’s director of public land protection, has watched the House Resources Committee hold countless Arctic Refuge debates, many of them fiery, since 1998.
“This one feels weirder and worse,” he said.
Years ago, there were Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the debate. The Arctic Refuge fight didn’t entirely align with party labels.
Now, Manuel said, there’s less independent thought in Congress and more partisan dictates.
It was clear from the start, Manuel said, that all the Democratic amendments would fail. And they did.
In addition to the Arctic Refuge provisions, the bill mandates lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve and Cook Inlet.
The reconciliation bill is controversial for other reasons, and GOP unity might not hold in Congress. Some Republicans say they'll vote no because the bill adds trillions to the deficit.
