GOP chair: 'Beijing George' threw us under the bus
For the last few days, House Republicans have strode into an empty chamber to assail Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her refusal to grant oil companies expanded privileges to drill off America's coasts.
While Pelosi remains Enemy No. 1 in the GOP demonstration, their party's president is coming in for a growing share of criticism. A top Republican excoriated President Bush for jetting off to China for the Olympics while ignoring what some conservatives say is his obligation to order Congress back to Washington to vote on offshore drilling legislation.
Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) told fellow GOP lawmakers and staff that "Beijing George" was tossing his party's lawmakers "under the bone dry bus," The Hill reports.
Beginning last Friday, immediately after the House adjourned for a five-week recess, conservative Republicans stormed the Capitol's empty House floor for a series of speeches on the need to open US coastlines to more drilling.
The protest has continued every day this week, and Republicans say they will maintain the demonstration until Pelosi agrees to a vote on their energy proposals. (Some Republicans even are crediting their protest with causing a slight reduction in the price of gas this week.)
Democrats have derided the demonstration as little more than a publicity stunt and blame Congressional Republicans for blocking a variety of energy proposals that they say could lower prices without expanding drilling. Environmentalists say oil companies are not sufficiently drilling on the leases they already have on tens of millions of offshore acres.
Bush is Constitutionally authorized to call Congress into special session -- which he threatened to do around this time last year to force a vote on a controversial spying law -- but the White House says the president will not exercise that power to advance the drilling debate. Republicans initially were reserved in their targeting of Bush, and McCotter's legislative update memo is the most severe broadside the lawmakers have aimed toward the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
McCotter, known for his frank and sometimes unusual political opinions, was not pleased with that decision. His memo stated, "Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. ... Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some 'Made in (communist) China' souvenir t-shirts: 'Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation.'"
A White House spokesman told The Hill that Bush supports the GOP's demonstration but said a special session would be a waste of time if Pelosi refuses to allow a vote.
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