ANWR removal splits House GOP

House leaders, before departing for the Veterans Day weekend, pulled the budget bill from the floor because they lacked votes from their own party to pass it.

They had jettisoned the controversial refuge drilling section late Wednesday to win over Republican moderates. They also tossed a section that would have lifted a federal ban on offshore drilling. However, those moves cost them the support of Western Republicans who said the energy development was the most important part of the bill to them.

Without ANWR, "I don't have much incentive to vote for this package," Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said this week.

These are unusual times for a Republican majority that has usually kept its members in line. But their battle for the $50 billion spending reduction bill is not over, and the fight over ANWR lurches on too. Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he hopes to bring the budget package back for a vote next week.

Dropping ANWR drilling still leaves controversial cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and student loan programs.

"We were not quite where we needed to be," Blunt said.

The Senate has already passed a five-year budget bill that includes ANWR drilling. Budget bills like this one cannot be filibustered, so Senate Democrats opposed to ANWR-drilling have been powerless to block this one.

Any budget bill the House manages to pass would have to go to a conference committee to resolve the differences. That committee could put ANWR back in. Then it would have to go back to the House and Senate for another vote.

Republican Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Pete Domenici of New Mexico are expected to be among the conference negotiators, and both have championed ANWR drilling.

"I can't imagine that those powerful senators wouldn't stick (ANWR) back in," said Melinda Pierce, lobbyist for the Sierra Club.

Environmentalists' big hope Thursday was that the Republican moderates will continue to defy their party leaders if the bill comes back with ANWR drilling attached.

"We need moderate Republicans to truly step over the line today and give their blood oath that they are not going to vote for a bill this month, next month or next year that contains the Arctic," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.

Six anti-drilling Republicans, led by Rep. Charles Bass of New Hampshire, seemed to take that pledge Thursday. Bass, a member of centrist group called the Republican Main Street Partnership, said he wasn't going to budge on the refuge "no matter how many arms are twisted."

Ron Talley, spokesman for the Main Street Partnership, said the six have found that ANWR drilling is too unpopular with the voters in their districts.

"This is nothing against Sen. Stevens. This is nothing against the leadership or the president," Talley said. "This is basically preservation for these people in local politics."

By his count, more than 20 Republicans are committed to voting against a final bill if it contains ANWR. It would take just 15 to kill the package, since the Democrats are united against it.

Jerry Hood, working for the pro-drilling lobby Arctic Power, said he has "every confidence" that ANWR will be in the final version of the bill and predicted the moderates will fold.

"Those that have written our obituary and those that want to make blood oaths are making a big mistake, in my opinion," he said.

The budget bill, among other sweeteners, has a $1 billion increase for the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, which is important to cold northeastern states, even more so when fuel prices are high.

"If Charlie Bass gets a billion for LIHEAP and he throws that away because ANWR is in it, I wouldn't want to be coming home to New Hampshire if I were Congressman Bass," Hood said.

The House Republican setback came on the same day that a key Senate committee failed to get agreement on nearly $70 billion in proposed tax cuts over five years -- another Republican priority. The Finance Committee put off action on the tax package after Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine declined to support it. No Democrat on the panel supports it.

Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who tried to negotiate an agreement between Snowe and conservatives, summed up his dilemma and, seemingly, those of House Republicans as well, when he said: "If I move one way, I lose a couple votes. If I move another way, I lose a couple votes."

Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at lruskin@adn.com. Some information in this story came from Knight Ridder Newspapers.