Fears of a shutdown

The prospect of a September government shutdown loomed over the Capitol on Wednesday as the two parties fought over rising energy prices.

It’s a fight some members of either party are willing to have, but others worry about who will get blamed for a repeat of the 1995 shutdown that President Clinton pinned on a Republican Congress.

{mosads}Lawmakers and staff are starting to talk not just about how to avoid such a repeat, but also about who would gain and lose November election votes if it happened.

“The Democrats will probably want to play chicken,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).

Senate Republicans debated strategy at a party lunch Wednesday, discussing whether they should block a continuing resolution (CR) that must pass in September if the government is to continue functioning, according to lawmakers who attended.

The moratorium on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) has been renewed annually for decades in spending bills by Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses.

Since Democratic leaders this year are not planning to pass most of the individual spending bills, Congress will have to pass a CR to keep government functioning past Sept. 30.

Usually, such resolutions pass easily. But this year, soaring gas prices have changed the political calculus and Republicans have decided the issue might rescue them at the polls. Republican leaders say Congress should not leave for the August recess without taking a vote on drilling.

Republicans would likely have to make the first move by filibustering a bill, or by President Bush vetoing a spending bill. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said he doesn’t think the GOP would go through with it.

“I believe the Republican Party would be risking even more wrath of the American people than they’ve gotten so far,” said Van Hollen, who’s in charge of electing more Democratic House members this fall. “I think the people on the Republican side will pull back.”

The White House also brushed off the possibility of a shutdown, emphasizing that it’s Democrats who control whether there’s a vote on offshore drilling.

“We’ll try to be hopeful that Democrats will do their job by passing appropriations bills and do what the American people want them to do by allowing drilling, and try not to speculate on what might happen if they fail on both of those,” said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore.

Bush rescinded the executive order banning offshore drilling, but Congress must also act to open the waters to exploration. Bush on Wednesday again called on Congress to lift the moratorium.

But he’s never threatened a veto of a bill with the moratorium included in it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a longtime opponent of offshore drilling, has called the notion that expanded drilling would ease prices at the pump a “hoax.”

{mospagebreak}The drilling issue could come to a head with the continuing resolution. Republicans and Democrats who want to lift the ban on offshore drilling could oppose the resolution if it includes the moratorium.

Or Bush could veto it. If both sides stick to their position, that could lead to the possibility of a government shutdown.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) indicated that Democrats are doing their homework on the issue, noting that Bush himself has called for renewing the moratorium in his previous budgets and signed legislation every year with the moratorium included.

{mosads}“That shows how they are politicizing this issue,” Hoyer said.

The administration this week changed its budget request to call for lifting the moratorium.

Democrats say a government shutdown would be blamed on Republicans, because Bush is in charge.

They say it would hearken back to the tactics of 1995, when Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was Speaker, and the last Congress, when then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) employed confrontational tactics.

“That’s the politics of the past, of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay,” said a Democratic aide.

Presidential politics would weigh in, and some take comfort that they have a bigger megaphone in Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) than Republicans have in Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

A shutdown fight holds allure for Republicans, who have seen Congress’s favorability ratings slide to record lows with little political consequence for the Democrats in control. Though Republicans tried to tag Democrats with the “Pelosi premium,” polling has shown that Bush is taking far more blame for gas prices than are Democrats.

“It depends on whether the White House wants this fight,” said a Republican aide. “A lot has to be gamed out on both sides.”

Democrats could also try to sidestep the issue by putting the moratorium in a defense spending bill, figuring Bush is less likely to veto a bill for the troops.

On Wednesday, 17 Democrats — many of them vulnerable or in close elections — voted with Republicans who opposed an adjournment resolution to protest the lack of a drilling vote. The adjournment resolution passed by one vote.

Six Democrats and four Republicans missed the vote. One notable GOP absence was Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), who voted on other measures on Wednesday.

“He was at [conservative activist] Paul Weyrich’s weekly lunch,” said Blunt spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier. “The decision to go into recess was made by the 213 Democrats who voted for the adjournment resolution. Any one of them could have been the deciding vote to keep Congress in session to debate must-pass energy legislation. “

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had offered a process built around four Democratic and Republican amendments each, which would allow the GOP a vote on expanding oil drilling. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) initially reacted favorably that day, but didn’t formally respond until Wednesday, after Republicans banded together to block a vote on energy tax incentives. When McConnell tried to accept the offer on Wednesday, Democrats said the proposal was always tied to the energy tax incentives. Talks fizzled at that point.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said a compromise bill on offshore drilling is being discussed by 10 senators from both parties, adding that he is hopeful that some vote on the issue can take place before a debate on the CR. “If it ends up being one big vote on a CR and that’s the one vote we get and that’s the one opportunity we’ll have to address energy — then there’s a lot of pressure on that vote,” he said.

Sam Youngman, Jared Allen, Jackie Kucinich and J.Taylor Rushing contributed to this article.