Pelosi firm: No vote on offshore drilling

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday ruled out a vote on new offshore oil drilling even as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he might be open to a compromise that included it.

The scramble over expanded drilling off America's coasts — ammunition for a weekend of rat-a-tat-tat by the presidential campaigns — underscores the political power of $4-a-gallon gas. Though President Bush and other backers of new drilling acknowledge it wouldn't directly affect gas prices for years, they have pounded Democrats for opposing the measure, which is now supported by most Americans.

Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech today in Lansing, Mich., on energy policy, unveiling what spokesman Bill Burton called "new short-term and long-term solutions to the energy crisis that we're facing."

On Tuesday, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is scheduled to go to the Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant in Newport, Mich., to spotlight his proposal for more nuclear plants.

The latest furor over energy policy began when Obama, campaigning in Florida on Saturday, spoke favorably of a Senate plan that includes new offshore drilling, a step he has long opposed.

"What I don't want is for the best to be the enemy of the good here," he told reporters in Titusville. "If we can come up with a genuine, bipartisan compromise in which I have to accept some things I don't like, or the Democrats have to accept some things that they don't like, in exchange for moving us in the direction of energy independence, then that's something I'm open to."

McCain also would be "open to compromise packages" on energy, aide Nancy Pfotenhauer said Sunday on CNN's Late Edition.

The Senate measure, unveiled Friday by five Democrats and five Republicans, would give states the final say in drilling 50 miles or more from shore on the Outer Continental Shelf. It also would repeal a key tax break for oil companies, expand funding for alternative-fuel vehicles and extend tax credits to promote alternative and efficient energy.