House postpones offshore drilling bill

House postpones offshore drilling bill
Supporters considering another attempt before end of week

The House postponed a showdown vote on opening 8 million more acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling. Supporters were worried about achieving the two-thirds supermajority needed to pass the measure under rules allowing little debate. They said they might make another attempt before week's end using different rules that allow broader debate but require only a simple majority.

Lawmakers returned Tuesday for only four days of work before Republicans call it quits after running Congress for 12 years. Democrats will control both houses for the first time since 1994 when a new Congress reflecting last month's election starts up in January.

Republicans already have left the biggest unfinished tasks of 2006 — approving budgets for most federal agencies — to their successors.

Leaders in both parties, however, still have hopes of renewing three popular tax breaks before leaving town. They include $4,000 deductions for college students, a sales tax credit in states without their own income taxes and business research and development credits. All expired last December.

In other action as Congress moved toward adjourning for the year by week's end:

_The
Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved President Bush's choice of former
CIA Director Robert Gates to succeed Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. Gates told the panel during a five-hour hearing he is open to new ideas about correcting the U.S. course in
Iraq. The full Senate could vote on Gates' nomination as soon as Wednesday.

_Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., soon to become chairman of the Environment Committee, predicted the next Congress will pass a bill to curb greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

_Senate Democrats from urban states ended a monthslong fight stalling passage of a $2.1 billion
AIDS funding bill that shifts money to rural states, where the disease is spreading fastest now.

_The Senate passed a bill to create a new agency within the Health and Human Services Department to oversee the development of medicine and equipment to respond to a bird flu pandemic or a bioterrorism attack.

_The Senate scrapped a measure to provide $4.8 billion in disaster aid to drought-stricken farmers after Bush threatened to veto it. Conservative Republicans argued that it was to expensive.

_House and Senate negotiators worked on a final bill to allow shipments of U.S. civilian nuclear reactor fuel to India despite its development of nuclear weapons outside an international nonproliferation regime.

As for the Japanese-American internment sites, the National Park Service already operates facilities at two of the 10: the Manzanar National Historic Site in California and the Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho. The money in the bill the House passed Tuesday on a voice vote and sent to Bush would go to them and eight others, to be operated by state and local governments or organizations.

The Senate passed the bill last month. The Park Service says the program is too expensive, but the White House has not signaled opposition to it.

"Preserving these internment sites is a solemn task we all bear," said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., who was born in the Potson camp in Arizona in 1944. "Those who come after us will have a physical reminder of what they will never allow to happen again."

The camps housed more than 120,000 Japanese-American U.S. citizens and residents under an executive order signed by President Roosevelt in 1942. At the time there were fears that Japanese-Americans were loyal to Japan, and Roosevelt's order prohibited such people from living on the West Coast.

Thousands of families in California and parts of Washington, Oregon and Arizona were pushed from their homes and into camps surrounded by armed guards. The sites named in the legislation are in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

The last of the camps closed in 1946, and President Reagan signed a presidential apology in 1988.

"The understanding of this period in our history is essential. It has to do with fundamental rights even of native-born citizens in time of war," said House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif.

Another co-sponsor was Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., the only current member of Congress other than Matsui to spend time as a child in one of the camps. Former Transportation Secretary and Rep.
Norman Mineta and Matsui's late husband Robert, a former congressman, also lived in the camps.

The bill would give grants to nonfederal organizations for historical, research and restoration work at the sites named in the legislation, as well as others selected by the Interior secretary. The grants would require 50 percent in matching funds.

Regarding the oil drilling matter, House leaders gave no reason for canceling a scheduled vote on the bill that had passed the Senate earlier this year. But one congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because another attempt may be made, said some Republicans withdrew their support at the last minute, and sponsors didn't want to risk losing the vote.

The drilling bill covers an area 125 miles south of the Florida Panhandle and is up to 300 miles from Florida's Gulf Coast. The area is believed to contain 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough gas to heat 6 million homes for 15 years. The country uses about 21 million barrels of oil a day.