GOP TO DASCHLE: "DANCE FOR ME! BWAH HAH HAH!"

WSJ: Daschle's Ethanol Dilemma

In the eternal battle between principle and pork, we know what usually wins in Congress. If Republicans play their cards right, they may be able to force Tom Daschle to make such a choice and get new Arctic drilling in the bargain.

The former Senate majority leader is a main author of a huge new mandate to double ethanol use (and raise gas prices by $8.4 billion over each of the next four years) that is part of the energy bill now in House-Senate conference. Mr. Daschle is already running TV ads touting his ethanol achievements in South Dakota, where he is up for re-election next year. The farm and ethanol lobbies expect him to deliver.

On the other hand, he and most of his fellow Democrats are promising to filibuster the energy bill if it contains a provision to drill for oil in 2,000 acres of the Alaskan wilderness. The question is whether Mr. Daschle and other Ethanol Democrats would vote to kill the entire energy bill merely over the Alaskan issue. They'd also be voting to kill their vote-buying ethanol subsidy in the bargain, and voters would know it. Evan Bayh of Indiana (the fifth largest corn producing state) and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin (sixth) are also ethanol-loving but oil-loathing Senators up for re-election.

Our advice to Republicans is: Make them vote on it. Alaskan drilling already has majority Senate support (and has passed the House), so they might as well test Democratic sincerity. Some Republicans are worried that the entire bill could then go down, but we think we know where Senator Daschle's priority lies, and it's in South Dakota more than Alaska. In any case, opening up Arctic drilling is one of the few potentially useful provisions in the subsidy-laden energy monstrosity. If they're going to pass it and help Mr. Daschle win re-election, Republicans might as well get something in return.

Updated September 25, 2003