Republican ambitions to open more federal oil and gas leasing in the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be a bust all over again, according to a government spending watchdog.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog that supports deficit reduction, found in an analysis that new leasing in the area would only raise between $3 million and $30 million.
The report comes as Republicans and President Donald Trump are again eyeing ANWR as a piggy bank to help pay for a sweeping, multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill to implement tax cuts and other aspects of Trump’s agenda. A House-passed budget resolution tasked the Natural Resources Committee with finding at least $1 billion in revenues for the bill.
“Taxpayers have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to ANWR leasing,” Autumn Hanna, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said in a statement. “It was never a credible revenue offset, and it certainly isn’t now.”
