Senate kills Arctic-drilling bill, cuts benefits

WASHINGTON — In the final clashes of a year of partisan conflict, the Senate dealt defeat Wednesday to legislation allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but Republicans salvaged a $39.7 billion package of deficit cuts on Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote.

Legislation providing $29 billion in aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and other storms cleared with ease. And hours of back-room negotiations yielded surprise passage of a Democratic-initiated call for a temporary extension of the anti-terror Patriot Act without changes.

"This has been the saddest day of my life," said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, lamenting the demise of legislation to open the wildlife refuge to oil exploration.

Other advocates of drilling said they would try again next year. But with lawmakers eager to leave the Capitol for the holidays, the bill became one of the highest-profile casualties on the Republican legislative agenda.

President Bush praised the vote on deficit reduction but was less enthusiastic in saying he would sign the Patriot Act extension his lieutenants had fought for weeks, preferring a permanent renewal that included changes in the measure first passed in 2001. "The work of Congress on the Patriot Act is not finished," he said.

The extension of the Patriot Act signaled that the White House and congressional Republicans will have to accept changes next year in comprehensive legislation that had seemed on the verge of passage only a few days ago.

As recently as midmorning, Bush sharply criticized supporters of a Democratic-led filibuster that had stalled the measure short of passage, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had said he would not accept — and the president would not sign — a short-term extension that the Democrats sought.

Republicans "tried to play a game of chicken, and they lost the game of chicken," said Sen. Russ Feingold, a leading critic of the bill Bush had wanted. The Wisconsin Democrat said it shortchanged civil liberties in the name of the war on terror.

The money for Katrina — $11 billion more than Bush proposed several weeks ago — was without controversy. But it became ensnared in a parliamentary tangle that took hours of closed-door negotiations to work out.

Even when Frist, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and their lieutenants walked to the Senate floor after 9 p.m. to announce an agreement for clearing several year-end bills, the ensuing flurry of activity left several bills short of final passage in a Congress where Republicans hold majorities in both houses.