Bush lifts offshore drilling ban

US President George W. Bush on Monday lifted a White House ban on offshore oil drilling and urged lawmakers to follow suit amid an election-year fight over painfully high gasoline prices.
"The American people are watching the numbers climb higher and higher at the pump, and they're waiting to see what the Congress will do" about legislative prohibitions, he said in a brief statement in the White House Rose Garden.
But Democrats who control both houses of the US Congress rejected Bush's mostly symbolic appeal, effectively dooming a proposal that appeared to enjoy broad US public support some four months before the November elections.
"The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who urged Bush to bring some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile to market.
"We cannot drill our way out of this problem," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who charged that big oil companies are "not using more than half of the public lands they already have leased for drilling.”