Senator Stevens cynical ploy to open ANWR had real effects on real families.

Berkshire Eagle Online - Editorials: "If low-income families across the Berkshires, Massachusetts and New England run short of money to pay their heating bills this winter, they can blame Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and his fellow cynics among the Republican leadership in Washington. When legislation opening the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling went down to a well-earned defeat in the Senate it took an attached plank calling for $2 billion in extra heating aid for the poor this winter with it, delivering a pre-Christmas blow to this who are already struggling to pay their inflated oil bills.
Decimating the ANWR for a few months of oil has long been a pet project for oil industry crony Mr. Stevens. When it appeared he once again didn't have the votes, he conspired with the Senate GOP leadership to add the provision calling for the $2 billion in heating aid to the larger bill containing the ANWR measure, obviously an attempt in the words of Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, to 'buy votes for drilling.'
Senator Stevens' attempt to blackmail his colleagues into voting for Arctic drilling failed, as the Pentagon spending bill could not overcome a filibuster unless the ANWR provision was dropped from it. In an apparent exercise in spite, the Senate leadership not only dropped ANWR it dropped the attempted sweeteners, which besides heating aid also included some homeland security funding and additional relief to Gulf Coast hurricane victims. Senator Stevens didn't get his way, and the poor in the Northeast will suffer for it.
According



to the Energy Information Administration, home heating oil costs will go up 21 percent this season, a major hit for low income families. The extra $2 billion, roughly $46 million of which would have gone to Massachusetts, if not more, was desi"