The Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH-8) is planning in the next few weeks to tag the language of 3407 into the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act (H.R. 7) which will be formed in the Rules Committee.  The Rules Committee sets the form and basic schedule for bills coming to the floor of the House for voting. 
If the vote is successful it will make the 12th time that ANWR has passed the House in over 22 years of debate.  H.R. 7 is also commonly known as the Highway Infrastructure bill because it focus is the allocation of billions of dollars to future highway, bridge and transport infrastructure maintenance across the nation.  The bill is considered a very important bill in Congress due to its wide spread impact on every state and because of its jobs creation potential. 
Tens of thousands of jobs could come from implementation of this long lasting bill.  H.R. 7 is unique though in that it uses oil tax dollars provided by oil and gas exploration provisions to provide the funding needed to complete the job.  H.R. 7 will contain a provision to open the nations Outer Continental Shelf (OCS to oil and gas exploration, as well as a provision for the promotion of oil shale development, and lastly the provision to open the 10-02 of ANWR.  ANWR alone, is estimated by the Office of Management and Budget, could provide between $41 and $289 billion dollars to the national treasury over many decades.  The bonus that ANWR and any oil development tax revenue has is that it would be collected by the Federal Government anyway and does not amount to a new tax on the general population.

The House version of the Highway Infrastructure bill is not the first attempt by Congress.  Last year a Democrat sponsored version without oil and gas exploration provisions used a new national tax on personal income over $1million to raise a hoped $60 million to fund highway projects.  The bill failed on three different votes to pass the Senate.   Just as that bill met hard times the Houses version will also likely meet hard times.  Sufficient votes exist in the House to pass this bill but with the general trend for Democrats to not support ANWR as an issue on the Hill may lead to a lack of support in the Senate with its Democrat majority.  Most likely this will result in either a Conference Committee meeting between the two bodies with ANWR being stripped out, or the outright death of the bill.  In an election year, and with the level of national unemployment however, it is likely some sort of compromise will be worked out.

Along with the controversy that ANWR usually stirs up on Capitol Hill will be the controversy of the Key Stone Pipeline Project which was just rejected by the Obama Administration.  Key Stone has strong support from most all Republicans and many Democrats from western states and it is likely to be put in play again by Speaker Boehner.  How that happens no one is sure but the timing will like coincide with the movement of H.R. 7.

A review of the new components of the ANWR provision please read our previous article on the bill in the “Politics” section of our website. 

To view a copy of the ANWR provision H.R. 3407 click here:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3407ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3407ih.pdf

To view an outline of the nascent American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act H.R.7 click here:
http://www.speaker.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=269393