Jim Inhofe: “I say to the Senator, I do not want to disrupt your line of thinking because I agree so much with you. But every time I…”

“I say to the Senator, I do not want to disrupt your line of thinking because I agree so much with you. But every time I hear people talking about ANWR, and I hear people talking about stopping any drilling or exploration in ANWR, it occurs to me, here you are, the senior Senator from Alaska. You have been here for a long time, and I have gone with you up to the area in which you are talking about drilling. I have heard people compare that to a postage stamp in a football field or something like that. It is a tiny area up there. The question I have is twofold. First of all, why is it that as near as I can determine, people who live there all want to explore and resolve this problem we have in this country by drilling and exploring in ANWR? Who are we down here to tell them up in Alaska what is best for them? That would be the No. 1 question. Then, the second thing is, what I have observed, I say to the senior Senator from Alaska, who has been here longer than I have, is that every time this has come up--I came from the House to the Senate back in 1995--now, on October 27, 1995, we voted 52 to 47, right down party lines, to go ahead and start exploring in ANWR. All the Republicans supported it. All the Democrats opposed it.”