A bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to craft a compromise on energy legislation includes politically vulnerable members, according to a partial list of members obtained by The Hill.
Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Peterson (R-Pa.), who organized the group, have kept the list of participants under wraps since the recent announcement of its formal launch.
Abercrombie and Peterson previously indicated the complete list of members would be released last week but later reconsidered, saying certain members could be face political problems if their names were released.
Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), Gene Green (D-Texas), Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), Nick Lampson (D-Texas), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) are part of the group, according to the list.
The group met on Wednesday [...]
The bill that is being crafted breaks significantly from Democratic leadership on the topic of offshore drilling.
Boren, Costa, Green, Lampson and Nunes twice voted no on the Democratic leadership's "use it or lose it" energy drilling bill.
It'd be one thing if Costa were actually a "vulnerable member," but his "opponent" this year, Jim Lopez, has no records with the FEC, hasn't updated his campaign website in a month and a half and hasn't had an event in the district since March. Costa is about as vulnerable as Iron Man. So one must conclude that he plans to sell out the Democratic Party on energy as a matter of principle.
It is completely absurd to open up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling when there are over 60 million acres of leased public land lying fallow. The last people with any interest in lowering gas prices are oil execs; they want offshore leases so they can keep them in reserve and tell their stockholders how much cash they're sitting on. So Costa simply wants to enrich oil company bigwigs at the expense of the middle class, and ignore the serious risk to the planet in stalling on departing from the failed energy policy of the past. This man shouldn't dare even call himself a Democrat after the work he's done in the 110th Congress.
